“I am very angry and insulted, as all self-respecting Georgians should be angry and insulted. We had the elections stolen from us in every big city. We won this election and the group of bandits who usurped the Georgian government snatched this victory from us. They robbed us and deprived us of our most basic right to be the masters of our own country,” Georgia’s third president Mikheil Saakashvili said, assessing the local self-government elections after the second round held on October 30 which saw Georgian Dream winning.
As Saakashvili notes in his latest message, Georgian Dream should be held accountable before the law.
“What should we do?! We must ensure that the fraudulent government pays the appropriate price to the people – to take back power from them and make them answer to the law. This is what our neighbor Armenia did, where Pashinyan fought against a similar oligarch, who was backed by Russia and rigged the election, but the Armenian people still won, many and many more took to the streets until the bandit government broke and called for early elections. Exactly the same should be done here. The fraudulent bandits should go and call for early elections.
“The Ukrainians did the same to Yanukovych when he sided with the Russians to the end, but Yanukovych was many times more ruthless and wealthy than Ivanishvili.
“After all, the idea of such revolutions was born in Georgia during our generation and how can we not be able to do what others have imitated before and even succeeded in? We do not have much time, we have to act in many places and with great numbers. We need to listen to the opinion of the leaders and take the initiative on the ground. Of course, we have to do everything in parallel, since such catastrophic observational findings have not been seen in either Armenia, Kyrgyzstan or during the Rose Revolution.
“But now we have full legitimacy for street protest and resistance to violence,” he wrote.
The third president of Georgia also assessed the move of Lelo leader Mamuka Khazaradze, who left the parliamentary mandate in protest following the announcement of election results and called on his teammates in parliament to follow Khazaradze’s example.
“Mr. Mamuka Khazaradze’s move yesterday was very impressive, I fully share his position and completely agree with Nika Melia’s speech. I cannot wait to join you, but I need your help in that too. No prison door can restrain the just wrath of the people. At the same time, we must understand that Parliament has already lost the function of a government platform. No decision can and will be made there. Talking to the bandits about reforms and changes for the benefit of the country only serves to prolong the time to extinguish the spark of protest and to make people give up on our country both on the inside and outside. Therefore, my advice would be for the patriots of this nation and my comrades to do as Mr. Khazaradze did and to leave the parliament and leave the ‘Dream’ alone with itself,” reads the message from Rustavi prison.
By Ana Dumbadze
