Lelo-Partnership for Georgia boycotts parliamentary work due to Saakashvili

Lelo-Partnership for Georgia parliamentary fraction has boycotted parliamentary activities until the health condition of Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been on hunger strike for 33 days, is stabilized. 

The faction members have demanded the transfer of Saakashvili to a civil clinic, instead of the government offered  prison clinic. 

Unlike Lelo political party leader Mamuka Khazaradze, who has decided to leave his parliamentary mandate in protest of ‘fabrication of recent municipal elections,’ other faction members say they will stay in the state legislature. 

They will also vote for the constitutional changes in the coming days which were approved with its first reading on September 7 and which concerns electoral issues. 

Saakashvili called on opposition MPs yesterday to leave mandates in protest and fight for the annulment of municipal election results. 

Saakashvili, who is a citizen of Ukraine and currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, was arrested in Tbilisi a day before Georgian municipal elections on October 2.  

He says he returned to the country after eight years in political exile, ‘to save Georgia’ from the ‘pro-Russian rule’ of the Georgian Dream government.  

In 2018, the Tbilisi City Court twice tried Saakashvili in absentia and sentenced him to six years in prison for abuse of power.

Both Saakashvili and his United National Movement party expected that the ruling party would either lose or receive just a few votes in the recent race and the opposition would be able to demand snap parliamentary polls to remove it from power.

However, the ruling party has won 63 of 64 mayoral constituencies and received 47 percent of the vote in the proportional part of the race.