Gachechiladze: spring and summer protest actions of Georgian opposition had been planned by Saakashvili

The broadly covered rallies of the opposition held during spring and summer in Georgia, had been pre-planned well in advance by the government of the republic with the aim to "let off steam" of negative energy of the population and show everybody that the opposition is impotent. This is the opinion of Georgiy Gachechiladze, leader of the Party of "Greens" of Georgia.

"Our party didn't take part in the spring and summer protest actions, as we had declared well in advance that we should participate only in one action to be held on November 9 last year, but not in the actions of the opposition, because it'd be in Saakashvili's interests. We had foreseen the result of these rallies. Members of our party gave many interviews to different mass media on this issue both before and after these actions. It was quite easy to guess that the three-month protest marathon was to Saakashvili's satisfaction," Georgiy Gachechiladze said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to his story, the rallies of the opposition held in spring and summer meetings had been pre-planned by the authorities of Georgia with the aim to "let off steam", before Tagliavini's report about the reasons of the August 2008 conflict in South Ossetia, from the people dissatisfied with the policy of the authorities, compromise the opposition, and prevent protest actions after publication of the report.

"Saakashvili was preparing to publication of this report, which was due to appear in its first version on July 31. And just in early July all the rallies went down. An interesting thing happened - the publication of the report was delayed in Europe by a couple of months," Mr Gachechiladze said.

He notes that already last December all the governmental TV-channels, which are the majority in Georgia, opened their live programmes, giving the floor to all opposition parties, except for the Party of the "Greens".

"We were not invited, because they know our position. In December, in January, and in February all these TV-channels were full of appeals to the population to go to these rallies. And after the end of this three-month marathon of protests, all these live programmes disappeared. That is, all these actions had been prepared by the state. Oppositionists were simply made use of; however, they failed to understand it despite our warnings," Georgiy Gachechiladze continued and concluded: "And when the protest actions were over, and publication of Tagliavini's report was delayed by several months, another scheme was put into play. We've named it "political sterilization": the unwanted political organizations, which remain outside authorities' control and influence, are isolated from the media space. This is what happens now. While those ones who are 'to the authorities' liking' are broadly circulated."