Putin loyalist Kaladze runs for Tbilisi mayor
The former soccer player and secretary of Georgian Dream wants a third term as mayor of the capital. The Putin-aligned oligarch, the country's “real master,” was present at the party. Anti-Western slogans and threats to expel the EU ambassador. For the opposition, the mayor-champion's new candidacy is yet another anti-Brussels “signal.”
Moscow (AsiaNews) - With the candidacy of former soccer player Kakha Kaladze for a third term as mayor of Tbilisi, the Georgian Dream party (of which the mayor is secretary general) solemnly inaugurated the start of the election campaign for the upcoming local elections with a big party in the capital's Mtatsminda Park in the presence of honorary president Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Putin oligarch who is the real master of the country.
Kaladze sought to ramp up anti-Western aggression by calling for the expulsion from Georgia of the European Union (EU) ambassador, Poland's Pavel Herczynski.
The display of patriotic pride began with a grand evening light show and the notes of the beloved melody ‘Tbiliso’, while important figures and ordinary people, all dressed in colorful clothes, paraded through the streets.
A major campaign to involve the population began in the capital, seeking to exalt Georgian identity against all those who want to distort it, involving the country in a war of worlds. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze began by thanking the Georgian people for their confidence in last year's parliamentary elections, “similar to a referendum to choose peace, dignity, and development.”
The thanks then focused on Ivanišvili as the “savior of the homeland,” the man who "in 2012 freed Georgia from hetero-directed authoritarianism, and since then we have been living in peace, our country is independent and sovereign as never before,“ after the ”tragic decade“ of Mikhail Saakashvili's government, which was dependent on Western masters.
However, the prime minister carefully avoided mentioning the word ”Europe," which he regularly attacked until recently.
Introducing the candidate, he explained that “we could have simply chosen a good politician, a good administrator or a good patriot, but we decided to present a true champion, both literally and symbolically, a man who has given Georgia its greatest victory, from sport to politics for his country, in his family and in friendship, which any European capital would dream of having.”
Kaladze himself, after praising Ivanishvili once again, promised to guarantee two major objectives: “peace for Georgia and greater good for Tbilisi.” The oligarch-president did not want to intervene, refusing even to speak to journalists, unlike last year's campaigns, in which he took on the leading role of “prophet of the people” until October's victory, contested by the opposition, which is now divided over whether to participate in the local elections.
In his 2024 speeches, Bidzina openly accused the Deep State, calling it the “global war party” that intended to subvert order in the country by using opponents of the National Movement as puppets. In his predictions, the war in Ukraine would end in early 2025, and with the new US president, everything would be resolved, with reconciliation with Russia.
These expectations did not materialize, and Donald Trump did not throw himself into the arms of Ivanišvili and the Georgian Dream, against whom the US Senate is still discussing a very heavy sanction, the Megobari Act.
Relations with Europe have also become very complicated, and if by August 31 the authorities in Tbilisi do not comply with the European Commission's eight demands on ending political repression, fighting corruption, and reforming the electoral system, the visa-free regime for Georgian citizens entering EU countries will be suspended.
Kobakhidze and Kaladze have assured that they are “always open to dialogue with European institutions, provided that the bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels stops attacking us.”
For the opposition, the new candidacy of the mayor-champion is considered a new “anti-European signal,” given Kaladze's hostility toward the EU ambassador after Herczynski publicly read the Commission's recommendations for the release of political prisoners, “using his diplomatic status to damage the country, evidently on the orders of one of his masters.”
The leader of the National Movement, Levan Khabeišvili, called the decision to run him again “pure cynicism,” given the numerous scandals in which he is implicated, calling him the “champion of corruption” and the upcoming elections “a Russian special operation in Georgia.”
.png)
04/10/2021 11:39
09/05/2024 09:49
