Giorgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
The 29-year-old Interior Minister of Georgia, Alexander Chikaidze, has resigned, confirming his inability to investigate two awful murders which are separated by 10 years. He was thought to be the youngest, but the most powerful minister in the government of the 33-year-old premier Irakli Garibashvili. The murders are the shooting of 22-year-old Zurab Vazagashvili during a special operation near the Tbilisi tennis courts on May 2nd 2006, and the murder of his father Yuri Vazagashvili, who was blown up on his son’s grave several days ago in their family village of Karafila.
According to the military expert Irakli Aladashvili, the murderers fixed a fragmentation hand grenade without a safety-pin ring under the grave-stone. They knew well that Yuri Vazagashvili visited his son’s grave almost every day; and he would have noted that the gravestone had been shifted and would have tried to put it back. That’s when the grenade exploded. The murder caused a sharp reaction in the country. The Interior Minister declared that he couldn’t stay on in his position, as employees of his ministry couldn’t find the murderers without delay. However, Chikaidze named other reasons for his resignation – accusations of lobbying interests and concealing top officials of the Interior Ministry who participated in the “liquidation” of 2006, when Zurab Vazagashvili was killed. Yuri Vazagashvili himself blamed the Ministry for this ahead of the terrorist attack in the Karafila cemetery.
The resignation of the Interior Minister was inevitable, but undesirable for Premier Garibashvili in the situation, considering the heavy reaction of the Georgian press, which doubted the efficiency of the government.
Alexander Chikaidze is the fourth minister to withdraw from the Cabinet. Before him, the ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and the state minister for European integration resigned or were dismissed. According to the Georgian constitution, in case of the resignation of six ministers, the parliament should hold a vote of confidence in the government. And today it is difficult to predict the result of any possible vote. Moreover, the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is thought to be the real head of the government and the ruling Georgian Dream coalition, is concerned about the ability of key ministers to solve ths problems which face the country.
And the problems are growing, including the devaluation of the lari and the fact that Georgia doesn't have the opportunity to export wine to the Russian market at the old ruble prices anymore. However, considering the political tradition of the last 25 years, the cases of the murders of father and son Vazagashvili could be a trigger for blowing up a whole complex of accumulated problems. Georgians are difficult to get out onto the streets because of 20% devaluation or inflation, but they are easily stirred up by arguments: “Georgia is on the edge of a government crisis, while the authorities cannot do anything!”
The young premier and his team found themselves in a difficult situation. It is not easy to punish officials of the Interior Ministry and officers of the special forces who participated in the operation of 2006. Today they take the top positions in power structures and they have their own view on the incident: “Zurab Vazagashvili was armed, opened fire on policemen, and they had to respond.” The father of the shot young man didn’t agree with this view. For many years he has been fighting for truth. He became one of the opposition leaders, and contributed a lot to the victory of Georgian Dream in the parliamentary elections in October 2012. It is impossible to ignore his demands, but the arrest and sentencing of the participants of the special operation could lead to indignation on the part of the police as a united consolidated corporation or sabotage by the police, i.e. a worsening of the criminal situation in the country.
However, the choice has to be made. The murder of Yuri Vazagashvili is not being investigated, and the circumstance is stirring up social dissatisfaction. They say that people whom he had been criticizing for years blew him up.
The new Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri (the former head of personal security of Ivanishvili) ordered the dismissal of a few top officials of the ministry, who were involved in the bloody operation near the courts. The same decision was made concerning the prosecutors who investigated the case 9 years ago and found that the police acted legally and reasonably. The near future will tell whether these measures will be sufficient to calm down society.
