Garibashvili copies Ivanishvili, say experts

The first meeting of Irakli Garibashvili as prime minister with reporters, held today, showed that the Georgian Prime Minister has mainly chosen to copy the style of his predecessor Ivanishvili in terms of communication with the media. Such an opinion was expressed by political scientist Georgy Nodia and the Head of the Institute of Management Strategy Petre Mamradze in an interview with VK

Thus, Nodia primarily emphasized that Garibashvili was not correct enough in conversation with journalists. "For example, when asked a question he did not like, he began to criticize the journalist for working for a magazine which supports the opposition. In fact, he reprimanded reporters, chastised them if he did not like this or that question. Such a style of "ordering"  journalists, characteristic of Ivanishvili, is apparently preserved by Mr. Garibashvili," Nodia says.
Petre Mamradze puts such behavior down to the age and inexperience of the current prime minister as a politician. "He is a sincere man, but he is only 30 years old, and he had never been a politician until Bidzina Ivanishvili took him on his "Georgian Dream" team. In just one year he became the Minister of the Interior, then Prime Minister, with no political experience. So he often says things which a professional politician would never say," the analyst emphasises.

At the same time, according to Mamradze, Garibashvili still behaved much better than at the end of December, when the conviction of the now retired Attorney General Otar Partshaladze was discovered. "Overall, I think the press conference was normal, there was no incidents such as a few weeks ago, when Garibashvili defended the Attorney General by totally inadequate methods, blaming the Georgian media for developing this theme too much. Now I have no special complaints about what I heard read out at the press conference," the expert added.

However, Mamradze rebuked the Prime Minister for his Ivanishvili-style manner of avoiding difficult issues, responding with criticism of the journalist. "In the countries of traditional democracy, if the Prime Minister talks to journalists this way, not responding to the point, but instead commenting on their questions, especially alleging that the questions are too provocative, a row would be guaranteed on the same day. We still experience this, and Prime Minister Garibashvili is, unfortunately, an example here," the analyst regrets.