US ambassador welcomes pardoning of Mtavari TV head, says move will ease polarisation

US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan on Friday welcomed Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili’s decision on Thursday to pardon the Mtavari TV channel head Nika Gvaramia, saying the move was expected to ease polarisation on the domestic political scene. 

 

“This was the discretionary right of the president, which I am sure she had used with full seriousness and responsibility,” the ambassador said.

 

Zourabichvili’s move came following the Supreme Court’s decision on June 19 not to accept Gvaramia’s lawsuit, and the European Commission’s oral report on Georgia’s implementing the 12 priorities outlined by the European Union last year for granting Tbilisi its membership candidate status earlier this week, which said Georgia had shown “no progress” on media pluralism.  Gvaramia was convicted and sentenced to three years and six months in prison last year for abuse of power while at the helm of Rustavi 2 channel in 2015 and 2019.