President Mikheil Saakashvili has issued a decree which gives a large number of his party tops the right to hold diplomatic passports for one year after they are dismissed, giving them the possibility to escape trial. (IPN.)
Georgian officials will, if they are fired, be able to use their diplomatic passports for one more year.
This means that they will be able to cross borders without any problems, which is not possible for ordinary citizen.
President Mikheil Saakashvili made this decision by issuing a decree, which is already in force.
According to the decree, officials who are fired or have served out their term, will have a right to use their diplomatic passports for one more year.
Georgian Dream, the coalition which won the parliamentary election, says controversial cases of Saakashvili’s government will be studied and the guilty will be punished.
But until specific cases have been studied, a number officials, who may be subjects of such investigation, will be able to leave the country without any problem.
The new decree applies to many officials: parliament speaker, prime minister, head of Supreme Court, head of Constitutional Court, members of parliament, secretary of the security service and his deputies, ministers and state ministers, chief prosecutor, head of state audit office, public defender, members of supreme and constitutional courts, Secretary of the High Council of Justice, president of the national bank, head of central election commission, head of president administration and its deputies, advisors of president, also assistants, head of president’s secretariat, president’s parliamentary secretary, head of president administration protocol service and deputies, chief consultants of this service, government office head and deputies, head of prime minister apparatus, advisors of prime minister, government’s parliamentary secretary, chair of protocol department and its main specialists, head of parliament apparatus and deputies, chair of international relation department of parliament apparatus, chairs of foreign relations, defense and security, Euro-integration committees of parliament, head of general headquarters of armed forces, chairs of autonomous republic governments and representatives of high councils, deputies of chief prosecutor, chair of state security service, head of foreign intelligence special service, president’s state trustees, Tbilisi mayor, premier, chair of council and deputy, chairs of foreign affairs ministry structural subdivisions, employees of ministry and diplomats abroad, honorary consuls, chairs of military missions and other officials.
The president and his wife may use diplomatic passports for the rest of their lives.
The decree by itself with its so many inclusions is a confession of guilt.
Smart move on Saakashvili. You already had an election pressured by the threat of populist uprisings. Surely Ivanishvilli will try to have a referendum of the old guard to put them in prison. He wants to look as if he freed the people from the evil doers. Just like Misha did. But Misha had justification. Boris wants it because Saakashvilli put most of Ivanishvili’s friends in prison. The entire corrupt shevardnadze regime. I wanted to go back to Georgia for Tbilisoba, but I barely learned enough Georgian. I really don’t want to learn Russian now.
kent are you from the mars? wtf are you talking about?
Now Misha is derided as corrupt, as was Shevardnadze, and it is implied that Ivanishvili only wants to prosecute government criminals to gain personal revenge. All of these allegations can be supported by substantial documentation. So you have clan replacing clan replacing clan.
One question – unless you acknowledge that every government following the first one was illegitimate because they were created by clans who felt they alone deserved special treatment, conveniently ignoring the will of 87% of the electors, will this cycle ever end?