Giorgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
The shooting team of the most popular Georgian TV-channel 'Rustavi-2' visited Kiev to record an interview with the former president Saakashvili for the weekly talk show hosted by Nanuka Zhorzholiani. Nanuka’s husband is a former deputy Interior Minister of Georgia, Irakli Kodua. He left the country immediately after the change of power in 2012. However, Zhorzholiani is still an anchor on the “Nanuka Show”, broadcasting interviews with the former president and his supporters from time to time.
This time Mikheil Saakashvili was presented as an advisor to Ukrainian President Poroshenko and the head of the International Consultative Council of Reforms. “Poroshenko ordered me to represent Ukraine in the international community and represent the international community in Ukraine,” Saakashvili laughed. “I don’t know where to start from.”
The former president gave the interview in a big office in the building of the presidential administration of Ukraine. He was sitting on a desk, demonstrating his self-assurance and relaxedness. It seems he wants to show that he doesn’t care about the attempts by the Georgian authorities to achieve his extradition to his homeland.
However, sooner or later the former president, who travels a lot all over the world as an advisor to the Ukrainian President, will have a problem with space for customs stamps in his passport, and of course the Georgian authorities won’t issue him another passport. What will the former president do in this case, as he has rejected Ukrainian citizenship? Saakashvili says that he has several passports, and if he has no choice he will become a fisherman on the Dnepr River.
However, it won’t happen soon. Saakashvili proudly showed “a special” American visa in one of his four passports: “It enables me not only to live in the US, but also to work!”
Saakashvili also demonstrated a certificate of an official of the presidential administration of Ukraine: “This is my card. We had cancelled such things right after the Rose Revolution in 2003, while here officials still show them to the traffic police officers.”
The former president admitted that he was annoyed not only by Ukrainian cards, but also the way the government works: “They have 7-hour sessions twice a week. I know that the longer the session is, the smaller the results are.”
He spoke about relations with Petro Poroshenko, sitting in his official car. According to Saakashvili, in the 1980s they studied at the Institute for Foreign Affairs together, but in different departments. “He tended toward doing business. When we were students, Poroshenko opened two video-rooms in Kiev; while I have never had business skills,” Saakashvili admitted, hinting that he had political skills greater than his university mate.
The Ukrainian political system is called by the former president of Georgia “a rusty vehicle which is difficult to start.” He makes it clear that he is doing his best to “start the process of reforms” together with his team of “young reformers” who have been appointed to top positions in Kiev. One of them is David Sekvarelidze. At the moment he is the deputy general prosecutor of Ukraine. So nobody was surprised when one of the top officials who had been accused of corruption was arrested in the building of the Ukrainian government. That’s how Georgian officials used to be arrested right after the Rose Revolution.
Saakashvili told journalists that he would visit Odessa where local forwarders claimed that local officials demanded that they pay bribes. However, organizing “people’s fury” against corrupt top officials is only one direction of his enthusiastic activity. “I don’t know where to start from, as there are so many problems,” the advisor to the Ukrainian President said. At the same time, he says that his priority is meetings with Western partners and promotion of Ukrainian interests in Western capitals. Four criminal affairs which are initiated against Saakashvili don’t bother him at all. “In Europe customers always tell me that the Georgian authorities demand my arrest, and we laugh at this together,” the former president says.
He admits that he is missing his family who live in the Netherlands, but even this sentimental moment was used by him for political purposes: “My younger son often asks me why I don’t want to take revenge after my return to Georgia, and I try to explain it to him, but I fail.” However, he didn’t pacify the Georgian authorities with the statement. They openly warn the population about a threat of riots and destabilization.
