TBILISI, DFWatch – The Georgian billionaire who seems to have a chance at taking over power in Georgia gets more personal in his second interview with Georgian media, criticising president Mikheil Saakashvili for making important decisions based on his own personal whims.
According to Bidzina Ivanishvili, the government’s decisions are made abruptly, and as an example he mentions the case of how his own citizenship was revoked just three days after he launched his political campaign.
Acknowledging that the Saakashvili administration has good management abilities, he points out they they aren’t too strong on long-term thinking:
“I had relations with Saakashvili and I tried to talk about further future plans and they do not hide the fact that they only make calculations for one to two months,” the businessman said in a video-interview with independent journalist Nino Zhizhilashvili, which was published by the Georgian magazine Liberali and republished elsewhere.
In his opinion, the decision to revoke his and his wife’s passport was an irrational decision driven by fear.
“They don’t know how to plan, they can’t look ahead. This is seen not only in the case of the passport and attitude with me, but throughout their career; if you look back, the first day of their coming into government; how it is identified how they come up with solutions, it’s instantly and very often unwittingly.”
The main problem, as Ivanishvili explains it, is that only one person is making the decisions, and a single person cannot rule the country alone.
“Their main goal is to survive in this situation, so they say, ‘let’s take his citizenship’ that’s how the deicsion was made,” he sais in Zhizhilashvili’s video interview.
If the government prevents him from running in the elections, Bidzina Ivanishvili thinks the elections will be illegitimate. According to him, the president was afraid that his group would fall apart, that’s why he made such decision.
“A threat arose for Saakashvili that except for his closest circle of up to ten people, fluctuations would happen in his big governmental group. I know Saakashvili’s character’s, it’s his decision,” he says.
Ivanishvili then goes on to talk about the possibility that he may not be entering politics. Then, he says, it is obvious that this government will very easily win the elections and keep the team together.
“But what’s next? I know what kind of budget will be waiting for them then. They waste money on some concerts and other things. They’ve made budgets [that are] like their own pockets. But they know better than me that they will be responsible for the foreign debts in several years and it can’t be delayed forever,” he says, adding that soon the government won’t be able to finance the police and maybe won’t even have enough funding for ‘his favorite team’ the way they are putting together budgets.
“No one will come here. No one will invest money in this country… Poor people will not stand this for a long time, and a catastrophe will happen.”
Talking about interior minister Vano Merabishvili and generally about the President’s team, Ivanishvili says that they are the victim of their own power, which ‘they created illegally.’ There is no perspective of what they do and there is no chance for them to achieve anything.
“They cannot arrest the whole of Georgia. They should look forward,” he adds.
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.