Georgian political experts negatively assessed the prospects of a pardon of the political associates of ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili – Vano Merabishvili, Bacho Akhalaia and Gigi Ugulava – by President Giorgi Margvelashvili.
Saakashvili said that "President Margvelashvili's place in history, in politics, can only be measured by whether he will have mercy on these three people, who have done a lot for the Georgian statehood." "These are people who created the first Georgian military industry, the people who created a world -class police force. People who have built more buildings in Tbilisi than any other mayor," the head of the Odessa Regional State Administration said.
Margvelashvili told Saakashvili that if he will do it, it would not be for political reasons. "I know that this issue is discussed in Georgia. I want to emphasize that the mechanism of pardon is one of the important functions of the humanism of the state in relation to people who have broken the law and were punished for it," the Georgian President said.
The Georgian political scientist Vakhtang Maisaya told Vestnik Kavkaza that if Merabishvili, Akhalaia and Ugulava are pardoned, Margvelashvili will become an opponent of the Georgian Dream coalition. Pardoning these people would be political revenge on all his former associates of Georgian Dream, of which he was previously a part, out of personal enmity," the expert said.
"If Margvelashvili pardons Merabishvili, Akhalaia and Gigi Ugulava, he will make a huge political mistake. The Georgian people will not tolerate those who put something the Georgian people fought for on the altar of political struggle, because of personal ambitions. Then he will be represented not as a president, but as a "so-called" president, in fact, he will lose legitimacy," he said.
As for the prospects for Merabishvili, Akhalaia and Ugulava, he said that "when they will be released, there will be no place in Georgia for them".
The head of the Institute of Management Strategy, Petre Mamradze, in his turn, expressed the view that it will be a political act to pardon such figures. "These are people who have become symbols of the sadistic regime of Saakashvili. But in Georgia there was no case that a reputation, rooted in the minds of the people, would have been wrong. Everyone knows that Margvelashvili was close friends with the leaders of the United National Movement, in Georgia it means a lot when people are bound by ties of the past. Therefore, it cannot be regarded as only a 'humanistic' step," the expert said.
According to him, for the population it would be more proof that the UNM and Georgian Dream have conspired. "Many people say that if there was collusion, the stolen property wasn't being divided, justice would have triumphed, as in the case with these three persons.They will think that the Georgian Dream coalition does not respect or fulfill its promises to the people," he pointed out.
"There will be individual reckonings, but mass riots won't break out. People today are too busy with other things – the proportion of Georgian people living in poverty rose sharply, in fact, they are fighting for their lives. Now it's more important for people to follow the ups and downs of the dollar during the day than Merabishvili and Ugulava," Peter Mamradze stressed.
A Georgian political analyst, Josef Tsiskarishvili, agreed that freeing such odious figures will be seen as a political decision. "In this case, all the sympathy that Margvelashvili has won in Georgian society may fail in one moment. Honestly, I do not believe in such actions of the president, because this holds out little hope," the expert noted.
"Saakashvili's team sincerely consider themselves to be political prisoners, because their crimes in the last decade were based precisely on political motives. Everyone remembers Saakashvili's call that Georgia needs zero tolerance in relation to society. He succeeded in this, Georgia has became the European champion in the number of prisoners per 100 thousand of population," Josef Tsiskarishvili stressed.
The political scientist expressed confidence that Merabishvili, Akhalaia and Ugulava won't be pardoned in the end. "There will be new parliamentary elections in Georgia in 2016, and this move will provide a basis for many people to believe that this is open support for the political system of the United National Movement," he concluded.
