Ex-President Saakashvili: TI is playing games; Eka Gigauri and company need to know we see through it

“The political prisoner list was deliberately published to ensure my absence from it, fulfilling a specific obligation undertaken before unknown parties,” former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili writes on social media.

As Saakashvili noted, Transparency International has chosen to remain silent and has no intention of publicly acknowledging his status as a political prisoner.

“Many thanks to Gia Nodia, Kakha Lomaia, Eka Kvesitadze, Nika Gvaramia, Nugzar Tsiklauri, and thousands of others for speaking out against the shameful omission of my name from the list of political prisoners,” Saakashvili wrote.

“Meanwhile, Transparency International itself has gone completely to ground and has no intention of saying a word in public about my political persecution, simply waiting for the issue to fade away on its own, despite numerous appeals from the public.

All of this forces us to conclude that this list was published specifically to document Saakashvili’s exclusion, fulfilling a clear obligation to someone. The half-hearted explanation that there are other political prisoners in Georgia only confirms this suspicion. Am I just an afterthought thrown in for good measure? Or does ‘other’ refer to Gharibashvili and Liluashvili?

Wait, the regime itself named me as the prime suspect in the ‘sabotage case’ during the 2024–2025 protests, yet Transparency somehow overlooked this. Could it be because Sandro Baramidze, who compiled this list, was the favoured deputy of that embodiment of malevolence, Thea Tsulukiani, back when their subordinate, Partskhaladze-Romanov, was fabricating cases against me? Could it be because the dictator is now preparing to bargain with the West, making my absence from that list a matter of vital importance to him?

Nor do I think it a coincidence that Gigauri and company handed the Georgian Dream authorities an improved corruption perception score in their latest report. Do you seriously believe corruption is decreasing in Georgia? Gigauri is convinced it is. And I am baffled by the fact, though I cannot stay silent, that opposition TV channels, toward whom I feel great solidarity, are stubbornly avoiding coverage of this issue. Hey, TV Pirveli and Formula.

Eka Kvesitadze put it right: all our current misfortunes stem from these lies, and ‘we cannot build anything on injustice.’ To me, Transparency’s primitive game is entirely transparent, and anyone with a shred of perception should see it the same way.

Make sure Eka Gigauri, Sandro Baramidze, and the rest of them understand loud and clear: we have rumbled their game, and you will not get away with it. And let nobody dare accuse me of treating them unfairly. Before you point fingers at me, ask them why they find it so agonisingly difficult to utter the simple words: ‘Saakashvili is a political prisoner’,” Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on social media.