The chairman of the Constitutional Court (CC) of Georgia, Giorgi Papuashvili, who was thought to be a friend and political supporter of the former president Saakashvili, made a sensational statement that the Minister of Justice Tea Tsulukiani blackmailed him, using ‘dirty videos of his personal life’, trying to influence the decisions of the country on important political problems.
Over the last few months, the opposition has managed to achieve beneficial decisions in the CC during the election campaign ahead of the parliamentary elections in autumn. The CC under Papuashvili’s chairmanship cancelled the legislative norm on immediate fulfillment of the decisions of courts of the first instance on civil proceedings. It enabled to delay fulfillment of the court decision on the opposition TV-company Rustavi-2, which the previous owners of the company (supporters of the ruling Georgian Dream coalition) were fighting for.
Of course, the CC’s decision dissatisfied the authorities, if they really tried to make the opposition TV-company keep silent. However, does Giorgi Papuashvili have real grounds to state that the government is ready to blackmail him, using ‘dirty videos’?
Papuashvili states that the hidden camera videos will be published in the very near future. He found out about this from ‘confidential sources’ and wanted to warn Georgian society that he wouldn’t have changed his decisions as a result of such blackmail.
The Minister of Justice Tea Tsulukiani reacted immediately to the statement and rejected ‘all provocations.’ At the same time, the leaders of Georgian Dream made several interesting statements which made it clear that the ‘explosion of the information bomb’, i.e. publication of personal videos, could take place on social networks in the near future. At least, members of the parliament from Georgian Dream, who could be called the most informed and competent, recalled that the special services had shot several thousand videos about the personal life of top politicians, artists, and famous people under Mikheil Saakashvili’s management.
Nobody denies this fact. Even the leaders of Saakashvili’s party admit that some representatives of the special services have been involved in surveillance over VIPs and saved videos. After the change of authorities in 2012, such numerous videos have been distributed all over Tbilisi. Who is distributing them? The authorities and the opposition are blaming each other.
According to Georgian legislation, distributing materials and other information about someone's personal life is punishable by imprisonment. However, in the Internet era, the process is impossible to be controlled. If we hear the sound of thunder, Georgian politics will finally turn into a dull musical.
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The General Prosecution of Georgia announced the initiation of a criminal case against five people for distributing videos of people's personal life for lucrative purposes on March 15th. After that, the Tbilisi City Court sentenced two of them to detention for distributing videos of people's personal lives for lucrative purposes.
