“Saakashvili’s relentless mud-slinging, and his periodic insinuations about betrayal supposedly committed against him, serve one purpose and one purpose only: to obscure the specific story of the deal he struck with the authorities in exchange for being allowed to leave the country. This story, for many reasons, troubles him greatly today,” states a letter written by Nika Melia, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Change.
As Melia writes in his letter from prison, Saakashvili loves betrayal but despises the traitor, whom he refuses to name.
“For many years now, jealousy towards me has been strangling Saakashvili like a noose tightening around his throat. To ease his heart and dispel his grievances, he has apparently circulated yet another letter stuffed with lies and slander: that Melia dispersed the rally held to demand my release and sent the people home! Only those who know the truth dare tell lies, and so it is with Saakashvili.
For Saakashvili, lying and shamelessness are second nature; he can no longer exist without them. Perhaps, he might find the strength to speak the truth himself about the gravest mistakes and human failings he committed and exhibited throughout the entire year of 2022. When I speak of mistakes and human failings, I mean in reality the most grievous moral and political steps he took. Let him also recount the issues he was working on throughout 2022 with the man he refuses to name. Why was ‘that man’ his emissary to the authorities in 2022? That is to say, even during his time at Vivamed! What deal was struck with the authorities through this man, and into what situation was Saakashvili manoeuvred at the end of 2022! The broader public will learn of these very grave details in any case, with specific facts, and it would be better for him to name that man himself, and his partners too. Saakashvili remained in active contact with ‘that man’ for many months even after his return to Georgia; ‘that man’ was Saakashvili’s intermediary with the authorities.
Saakashvili’s relentless mud-slinging, and his periodic talk of betrayal supposedly committed against him, serve one purpose and one purpose only: to obscure the specific story of the deal he struck with the authorities in exchange for being allowed to leave the country. This story troubles him greatly today, for many reasons. He is haunted by the complex and the fear of that dark chapter of his being exposed. Fear compels a man to lie. And that is why he behaves in a manner so dishonourable and so unhinged that even the devil himself might trip over it. Saakashvili carries the crushing moral, ethical and political baggage of 2021 and 2022 on his back like a pack of rags, even in those moments when he can no longer even perceive its existence.
Saakashvili loves betrayal but despises the traitor, whom he refuses to name! Unlike Saakashvili, I know the value of my word, and I do not change my position and opinions seven times a week. I said in my previous letter that if he continued to spray his poison, it would not go unanswered. For five years I said nothing publicly on this matter. He was in Vivamed; I was already free, and I never granted myself the moral right to do so. Yet in my place, he would have spoken a hundred times over.
Nevertheless, when one prisoner hurls mud at another with the clockwork precision of a pre-arranged schedule, once a month, and I witness thereby the revealed poverty of his soul, my silence is no longer appropriate. I can no longer facilitate his attempt to package his own complexes inside false accusations, which, every single time, pours water on the regime’s mill.
I am fully aware that he is unhealthily infatuated with himself. It is also understandable that he is constantly agitated by suspicion and is ‘pregnant’ only with care for his own ego [consumed entirely by self-preservation and pride]. However, it would not be excessive to observe that when another person’s dignity and honour are being assailed, and the slanderer attempts to make a habit of it, that particular obsession will naturally come to a heavy end.
And so, in this letter, I am disclosing a position I have kept close to my chest, and in doing so, I explain the eruptions of his fountain of bile. What can one do? He has once again snapped the rope in entirely the wrong place. I mentioned the years 2021 and 2022. His return to the country ahead of the local elections was motivated by nothing less than uncontrollable jealousy. Moreover, ‘that man’ and others were telling Saakashvili that if he did not come to Georgia, Melia would take the party from him. He was already in the grip of that particular phobia in any case. To this was added the then-unprecedented unity of the opposition, which had no precedent before or since, and this inflamed his jealousy to a terrifying degree. He also observed that the party had acquired a major donor, which I did not conceal from the public, and naturally he learned of it too. His contribution to that extraordinary opposition unity and to the funding of the 2021 electoral campaign was precisely zero. Against that backdrop, his jealousy peaked, leading him to perform his fatal somersault. In doing so, he brought his fate upon himself and turned a unique, highly promising political process to ashes. Following that, as I mentioned earlier, he took covert steps that the public will almost certainly learn about in detail later.
Furthermore, in [May–June] 2021, a private opinion poll was conducted. This was roughly around the time when Mamuka Khazaradze and I were searching for a joint candidate for the Tbilisi mayoral race. I had already been released from prison. We tried very hard, but time was extremely tight, and we couldn’t secure an agreement with any compelling candidates in time. Therefore, as a tactical move, the opposition united completely for the second-round run-offs, and Mamuka’s contribution to this was very significant.
This close relationship and the strategic moves made by Mamuka and myself unsettled Saakashvili even further. To return to the poll: it revealed that the United National Movement at that time had captured a large number of new voters for whom Saakashvili was not a deciding factor in casting their vote. Across the country, his influence was significant for only 52% of the party’s core voters. This reality, rooted in jealousy, unhinged him even further.
Who knows how many times I have argued with myself over whether I should have told you all of this much sooner, even in this small measure. Or indeed whether I was right not to respond to baseless accusations? Be that as it may, I restrained myself until now. There will be much more to discuss and to say with you.
I have every faith in the country’s success, and in the defeat before the people of a government that has turned itself into an instrument of the oppression of its own people, both active oppression (arrests, fines, violence) and passive oppression (the impoverishment of the nation). I have faith that rays of light will enter the eyes of a people bowed down in sorrow and contemplation, eyes that seem almost lifeless, and that every defeat endured until now will be transformed into one great and powerful impetus.
Yet I am duty-bound to tell these people that the replacement of Georgian Dream can never be achieved through falseness, cowardice, baseness, betrayal, or the attempt to sell betrayal as something worthy. I would have to abandon my senses to ignore the fact that everything in life is learned through experience. No one can expect me to stand in solidarity with a man who has stabbed me in the back, no matter how much I respect the people sharing a platform with him today or tomorrow.
Where Saakashvili is, the country’s interests are not. There are only private, egotistical interests. Being an enemy of Ivanishvili does not mean I must be Saakashvili’s partner. The rest, the future will show. Farewell for now — and stay strong, everyone!” reads Nika Melia’s letter.
For context: Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili published a post on social media on May 27 stating: “Melia’s mistake was that he dispersed the rally held to demand my release, which had been more numerously attended than yesterday’s, when in fact winning the elections in Tbilisi was impossible without my release.”
