Nika Melia: Saakashvili must name ‘anonymous’ man without delay; he will not get away with vague statements on this matter

“Saakashvili must answer to the public interest without any ambiguity whatsoever. It would be best if he were to write openly, and without delay, naming precisely whom he accuses of betrayal; it is a fact that it was at the behest of ‘anonymous’ traitors that he not only returned and was arrested, but acted as he did throughout the whole of 2022,” reads a letter from Nika Melia, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Change.

As Melia notes in the letter, society must know the truth.

“This is needed both for the present and for the future; history, too, must preserve unvarnished facts. It is not a personal dispute. When one opposition politician undertakes, by secret agreement, to fulfil conditions designed to damage the political process and to discredit another opposition politician in exchange for being freed from prison and taken abroad, and duly fulfils those conditions, this is not a personal dispute.

When the central figure of a secret deal is that ‘anonymous’ traitor, and when both he and Saakashvili, or Saakashvili through him, whichever way you care to put it, were, in the very end, at the final stage of the deal’s execution, at the close of 2022, cast aside and left in prison by the authorities, this is no longer a personal dispute.

Those of you who felt various subjective discomforts at my previous letter, and say ‘what a time to be raising this, under this dictatorship,’ I cannot recall so much as a murmur from you, let alone any public outcry, over the months-long, daily smear campaign that Saakashvili waged against me. My five years of restraint you are, unsurprisingly, even less inclined to remember.

Saakashvili unleashed his very latest venomous slander when he commented on the May 26 rally; the rally itself was all very well, but apparently, when far more people were ready to take to the streets to free me from prison, it was Melia who dispersed such rallies. In effect, people were ready to drop dead in the sun like carefree deer, but Melia was sending them home, so the story goes. And so, turning things precisely on their head in this way looks desperately insincere on the part of certain individuals; that is, those who decided to turn things on their head and declare that both Nika and Misha bear responsibility, and ‘what a time to be raising this now’…

The matter at hand is not the settling of a private score, but the satisfaction of a necessary public interest, without which, being on the field of battle is like moving across a minefield.

People will learn the truth through specific facts and evidence. This is essential so that tomorrow, or the day after, no one else may conduct themselves as disgracefully and devastatingly as Saakashvili has done.

There are always people who fear nothing so much as taking a new step or speaking a new word of their own; even when they know it to be true, they are still afraid. I know such people. People like that frequently bow their heads beneath the weight of life. But thank God, many always choose the path of struggle, and I am proud to count many such people as like-minded friends and fellows. Those who believe that victory is possible without truth, without knowledge of the truth: no, that is a great lie. In that way, people merely dream of victory whilst deceiving themselves; it is self-delusion and nothing more. Self-delusion it surely is. I would be the first to demean myself were I to renounce my principles and values.

I entered politics in 2014, in very difficult circumstances. I cannot recall a single close friend, family member or relative who welcomed my decision at the time. I believed in my step; I entered, with the ambition of bringing something new, into the hardest of times and the most gruelling of struggles. I repeat, I entered solely with the ambition of bringing something new, and I have never gone looking for political scraps from another’s table. Within a few years I had brought tens of thousands of new voters to what was then my party. Later still, particularly in 2019, 2020, and 2021, those new voters for the party significantly exceeded 100,000. That is to say, for a substantial portion of the electorate, knowing my political position mattered, and they cast their votes accordingly, which already placed an enormous responsibility upon my shoulders. What mattered most to those people was my honesty and straightforwardness. I always aimed to stay in constant communication with them, which required a great deal of effort. This support did not come out of thin air; behind it lie twelve years of hard struggle and tireless endeavour. And yet all of this considerable support is built upon truth and sincerity. I have no intention, therefore, of turning my back on that treasure and ceasing to be honest with those people.

My political intersection with Saakashvili, where any form of partnership existed, spanned the years 2016 to 2021. I first met him in 2016. Our relationship was, for the most part, always very difficult and fraught, with plain speaking, sometimes blunt in the extreme, heard on occasion. I had my own vision, and he had his. Over time, these two contrasting visions truly divided the party’s electorate in two. By the end, the party resembled more a coalition than a unified political entity. It had two politicians between whom a large electoral base was, in practical terms, divided roughly equally: 52 per cent fell to Saakashvili, 48 per cent to me; such were already the figures by May and June of 2021, and this was already plainly visible.

From the end of 2021, envy took its course, and what happened, happened. Yet a great deal remains unknown to the wider public, and the truth must soon come to light; every knot must be untied with specific, incontrovertible facts, after which I am certain that everyone will be able to draw the right conclusions. This is not merely my feeling; it is my considered and conscious conviction. For this reason, I repeat once more: Saakashvili must name that ‘anonymous’ man very swiftly indeed. He will not get away with vague statements on this matter,” writes Nika Melia in his letter.