The frenzied prosecution of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s political minority by Prime Minsiter Bidzina Ivanishvili’s political majority is increasingly looking like a Japanese survival-horror flick. Or at least a black-comedy version of it.
The latest and perhaps the most bizarre case are allegations that the once-all-powerful Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili doctored a passport to travel with a Saakashvili-led delegation on November 30 to Armenia.
In testimonies published by the interior ministry, airport passport control officials assert that the ID presented by Merabishvili contained his photo, but somebody else’s ("a certain Levan Maisuradze") name.
Only after the snafu was pointed out to a Merabishvili aide, did the ex-prime minister pull out "his real" passport, they claim.
Merabishvili has denied that he tried to pass a false passport, and charged that the interior ministry, which later questioned him, was being turned into a "repressive machine" for the selective prosecution of critics.
Merabishvili, Georgia's last prime minister, now works as the secretary-general of Saakashvili's United National Movement.
Responding to the fake-passport allegations, the president, in turn, termed them "so absurd . . . that it is hard for me to even make a comment about this."
Meanwhile, online commentators point to various holes in the government's line of argument.
While, conceivably, an ex-interior-minister might know a thing or two about who can make a fake passport, why he would choose to try to use one in Georgia is unclear. Especially, since he was going on an official visit and not attempting to escape to Rio camouflaged in sunglasses and an Hawaiian shirt.
Other commentators have questioned the reasoning behind the decision to let Merabishvili proceed through passport control and on to Armenia, if, in fact, the government believed it had legitimate charges. The interior ministry claims it didn't want to disrupt Saakashvili's visit.
It plans to continue its investigation, saying that Merabishvili, "aiming to hinder the process of [the] investigation, has supplied [the] investigation with false information which contradicts the facts of [the] investigation."
Interior MInister Irakli Gharibashvili spelled it out in simpler terms: "He . . .lies," he told TV reporters on December 2. "He should show enough manhood to acknowledge the established fact" that he used a fake passport, Gharibashvili continued.
This appears to follow a certain line of recent commentary from the cabinet. In an interview with Foreign Policy's The Cable, Georgian Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze described the former officials under arrest as "criminals and guilty."
So much for "innocent until proven guilty"?
Restoring justice and rule of law to Georgia was a key component of Ivanishvili's election platform, and many Georgians initially met the government's various investigations and arrests with cheers.
But, as the prosecutions strain the atmosphere in an already strained country, that popular enthusiasm has been losing steam. Some even fear that, at this rate, there might some day be precious little opposition left to prosecute.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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