“Consumed by the conviction that nothing will come of it anyway, a significant part of the opposition has turned against me rather than against Ivanishvili. Your egos will deflate, and by then the point-scoring and hand-wringing will come too late,” declared former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili at today’s court hearing.

Saakashvili stated that he cannot defeat Ivanishvili from behind bars, and that he needs to be free to move to achieve this goal.

“Convinced that nothing will come of it regardless, a significant part of the opposition has made itself my opposition rather than Ivanishvili’s. I cannot defeat him from behind bars; for that, I need to be out and free to move. Everyone, bar one, had Gamsakhurdia in mind, and we all saw what catastrophe that brought. Every one of us must place the interests of the country above personal ego. Those egos will deflate soon enough, and by then the recriminations and the hand-wringing will come far too late. So, my friends, the situation is as follows: the regime is in a state of total isolation, which means they are getting their wires crossed with the Americans too. They are trying to win Trump over — mother is mother, father is father, and so on — but when Trump says that opposition leaders should not be in prison and should not be silenced, they have failed to grasp the message. They are trying to draw Trump in with business projects, but experience shows this will not win his heart. If a business project is dangled, someone in Trump’s circle may well take the bait, but politics is politics. Not only will they fail to sort things out with America, but they are also heading towards a serious deterioration. As for Europe, there is total incompatibility. This is the same Europe that these people denounce along with Ukraine, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. There can be no reset without fundamental change, and we have very little time for that. My vision stands, and together with you this vision will prevail.

Let us not allow them to reduce the entire country to a chaotic, idiotic bazaar. Ivanishvili must not be allowed to drag us into his own marketplace; that is our task. We must show the people that we are capable of concentrating on ideas, not trading blows. Some call my supporters ‘tent women,’ others call them worse. I urge you to refrain from such epithets. I am in an optimistic frame of mind. My hairstyle means I am in fighting form. Let us carry our optimism and our vision to as many people as possible. We may emerge from all this either utterly destroyed or victorious. Georgia was the number one reformer in the world, and we shall reclaim that. Georgia was a country that carried great weight in the world, and that weight saved us in 2008; the whole world stood by us. Away with defeatism, we shall be the victors,” declared Saakashvili.