Page 52 - BNE_magazine_10_2020

52 I Eurasia bne October 2020
In a video statement, Saakashvili said he wanted to be PM for two years, which would "be enough to pull the country out of the swamp".
Saakashvili returning to fray in Georgian general election defying critics who see move as own goal
Iulian Ernst in Bucharest
The prevailing wisdom right now is that Georgia’s main opposition party United National Movement (UNM) and its coalition of smaller parties Strength is in Unity – United Opposition has scored a terrible own goal in naming the polarising former president and self-exiled Mikheil Saakashvili as their candidate for prime minister ahead of the October 31 parliamentary election.
The UNM took the decision in an
effort to strengthen its position as
the main challenger to ruling party Georgian Dream (GD). It apparently wants to galvanise voters that might
be considering backing a more moderate opposition party but it would appear
to mean abandoning any plan for
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a broader pre-electoral coalition in favour of an "all or nothing" strategy perhaps better suited to a presidential knockout contest.
Following the Rose Revolution, the UNM ruled Georgia from 2004 to 2012. But GD came to power very much because of the deep unpopularity that Saakashvili had generated by the end of his time in power and the former president’s fierce rival – GD’s chairman, the billionaire oligarch and ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili
– might very well be thrilled to see UNM put forward such a divisive candidate.
“Bad sign”
“Saakashvili’s nomination is a bad sign for the opposition,” Kornely Kakachia, head of Tbilisi think tank Georgian Institute of Politics, told Eurasianet on September 8. “Georgia needs a consensus leader to chal- lenge GD, not someone divisive like him.”
“The more Saakashvili gets involved in Georgian affairs, “the more Bidzina
“Saakashvili’s nomination is a bad sign for the opposition. Georgia needs a consensus leader to challenge GD, not someone divisive like him”