UNM head melia says many will vote for opposition in run-offs ‘to save’ Saakashvili

Head of the United National Movement (UNM) opposition party, Nika Melia, says that many will vote for the UNM in today’s municipal election run-offs to save the country’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been on hunger strike in prison for a month. 

 

“Some may like or dislike us. However, Georgians will not let the death of Saakashvili in prison,” says Melia, who is running for Tbilisi mayor. 

 

The government has offered Saakashvili to move to a prison clinic, while the former president is demanding his transfer to a private clinic. 

 

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili claims that the UNM and Saakashvili have plans to stage a provocation at a civil clinic if Saakashvili is transferred there. 

 

Saakashvili, who is a citizen of Ukraine and currently chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, was arrested in Tbilisi on October 1, a day before Georgian municipal elections. 

 

He says he returned to the country after eight years in political exile, ‘to save the country’ 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.

 

Today Georgians are electing the remaining 20 mayors (of total 64) and 42 majoritarian members in City Assemblies.