UNM’s Pavlenishvili: Opposition unity against Ivanishvili cannot succeed unless Saakashvili and UNM are at its centre

“We have said many times that unless Mikheil Saakashvili and the United National Movement are at the heart of any alliance, it cannot achieve real results in the fight against Ivanishvili’s regime. That follows from the practical realities of the electorate,” said Irakli Pavlenishvili, chair of the United National Movement’s interim governing council.

Pavlenishvili said nothing new had been said on this, including in Mikheil Saakashvili’s post.

“Our international partners presumably follow the polls and know Georgia’s sociological data, general electoral mood and results. They probably understand that there is no alternative to uniting around Mikheil Saakashvili and the United National Movement. It is entirely normal in any partnership for both sides to express their views, and I think there is nothing tragic or incomprehensible about that. Anyone can express an opinion on any political process. By your logic, if a representative of a foreign country expresses an opinion, does that necessarily mean someone is planning a strategy?! Nobody has ever planned a strategy for the United National Movement. The party has frequently championed national interests, clashing with a number of different factions over the years. Unfortunately, in some cases even our European partners misunderstood what was happening in the country, including the period when Ivanishvili came to power, and the policy of ‘appeasing’ or ‘reconciling with’ Russia before that. So nobody can genuinely claim that the United National Movement acted on someone else’s instructions. On the contrary, I myself was a symbol of the fact that we always defended national interests, and it was precisely because we pursued those interests that we often clashed with all kinds of political forces, including partner countries on specific issues.

In general, if the party had had any information about this meeting, I would tell you. As a political force, the party had no information about the meeting. In theory, individual politicians may have known about it. If anyone did know, they should say so. But according to the information we have, the party’s core and a large part of it did not know about this meeting,” Pavlenishvili said.

Former President Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on social media that “at a conference organised by IRI (the International Republican Institute) in Lithuania, American and European experts and politicians told representatives of opposition parties that their only chance was to unite with me. In response, these opposition figures shot themselves in the foot, saying: ‘We don’t want to be with Misha, our supporters don’t want it, and Misha wrecks unity.’”