“YOUR AGENT DOESN’T KNOW YET THAT HE HAS BEEN EXPOSED. He will learn it today from the newspapers. He is a good financier, so take him with you, he might come in handy. I was talking about the president of the Cartu Group – Giga Chrdileli”, – stated Ivanishvili in his letter published on October 12, 2012.
Ivanishvili is no stranger to saying goodbye and this time he bid farewell to the Kumsishvili-Kvirikashvili duet.
In fact he did the same thing some time ago, when in his first open letter Ivanishvili accused the Chairman of the Bank’s Supervisory Board of being an agent and dismissed members of his team along with the chairman, namely director of the bank and his deputy. And just recently, he got rid of the primeminister and the First Vice Prime Minister.
Initially the title of this article was “Unknown Kvirikashvili”, which largely resonated the former Prime Minister’s mischievous clash with a member of the United National Movement –Nikanor Melia and an open confrontation with the sibling of his friend and recommender Levan Gachechiladze– singer Ucnobi. But I missed the moment. Probably I should have written about this in my blog.
The second title for this article was – „LEGALIZED Großmeister”, which is largely linked to Ivanishvili’s political comeback and the events that took place on Rustaveli Avenue following the police raids in night clubs. Ivanishvili skilfully managed to avert the repercussions of these actions by airing his son’s – Bera Ivanishvili’s video and instructing the Minister of Interior to arrive at the scene to diffuse tension and confrontation that was orchestrated by a specific group of the same government. This game was indeed worthy of a grandmaster and its Endshpiel was launched at 9.00 pm when Bera’s song “Legalize’’ was uploaded on the net and the game ended at 2.30 a.m. with almost emptied Rustaveli Avenue, which was being cleaned by the Mayor Kaladze’s “TbilService Group” employees.
This moment slipped away too and like our Minister of Interior – Gakharia, I extend my apologies for that! Forgive me for so many skipped editorials, but we have not had so many political developments taking place so fast and somewhat dramatically and even epically… so what if this was fairly gloomy. Giorgi Kvirikashvili’s hourglass was turned much earlier. Actually it was turned way before Kvirikashvili, acting on behalf of his party, asked Ivanishvili to return. This political comeback turned out to be fateful for Kvirikashvili and that is why he was forced to leave Ivanishvili for the second time after the latter’s return to the politics.
However, the events that preceded Kvirikashvili’s resignation were completely devoid of any epic nature. Appointment of the CEO of JSC Georgian Railway as the Minister of Finance, who definitely cannot take credit for effective reforms in the sphere of railway services and whose name is associated with some entirely new, independent and rather individual initiatives that were often disregarded by Kvirikashvili and Kumsishvili. There were some rather successful attempts to sugar-coat these initiatives and present them as a message that described the government’s vision. Kumsishvili’s much-talked-about response to the Minister of Finance, who had waged a war against banks, is a clear evidence of this. Kumsishvili pledged that the state would assist small and medium businesses by setting up a new credit guarantee fund that would compensate the risks that commercial banks have been rather reluctant to embrace in the recent years despite the fact that their SME portfolios are stocked to fund these type of businesses.
The initiative to set up a new credit guarantee fund, along with the four-point reform plan prepared by Kvirikashvili’s cabinet will be dismissed in favour of Mamuka Bakhtadze’s completely different and mostly welcome initiatives.
And still the question remains: what happened at the King Rostom’s Palace that is yet unknown to the Georgian public? Probably not much. Journalist Gocha Mirtskhulava described everything that took place at the King Rostom’s Palace in detail and the Georgian media paid him due respect for this. Nothing special happened at the meeting, with the exception that this was a hearing of the party case, where the recently returned chairman of the party – Bidzina Ivanishvili played the part of the ‘prosecutor’, Prime Minister Kvirikashvili was the “accused’’ and there were 50 silent “witnesses’’. Some of them were members of the government, others were employees of the State Chancellery and the majority of them represented the ruling party. Why silent? Apart from some attempts to answer Ivanishvili’s questions, everyone remained silent and obediently listened and witnessed how the once exemplary Prime Minister was ‘publicly disgraced’ and this was far from criticism.
For the record, not a single member of the ‘Georgian Dream’ party representing the government, parliament and chancellery had the guts to interrupt the uncontrollable and reckless criticism of the Prime Minister by the party chairman. Not a single one of them. Kvirikashvili was completely alone at the meeting that was attended by 50 other members of the ruling party. He was by himself and in this lonely mode it took him 24 hours to announce his decision to resign.
I am not completely right here. After all there was one person at the meeting, in fact the only one, who was ‘a man enough’ to attempt stopping Ivanishvili with his well-argued and convincing statements. And he was the last person who was indebted to Kvirikashvili in any respect. There was neither personal, nor political closeness between them. This brave person was the mayor of Tbilisi – Kakhi Kaladze. Without any reservation, he told Bidzina Ivanishvili that despite his deepest respect for him (Ivanishvili), he disagreed with his pathos, as well as his evaluation of the Prime Minister Kvirikashvili.
Afterwards was what we have been witnessing for the past 6 years, namely the UNICEF. And later the promised empty tribune, the traditional ‘Dear Compatriots ‘or friends.
…and the unchanged 25th TV episode.
