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MP Valeri Gelashvili Will Take Tbilisi Mayor and MP Bidzina Bregadze to Court

March 24, 2006

MP Valeri Gelashvili Will Take Tbilisi Mayor and MP Bidzina Bregadze to Court

The relationship between the government and the opposition is becoming strained. The governing party is demanding MP Valeri Gelashvili be fired, whereas the opposition wants the disgraced Minister of Internal Affairs to resign and for the Mayor of Tbilisi and MP Bidzina Bregadze to punished.

The reason behind the disagreement involves the No. 84 School. On March 18th the school was burnt down. The Mayor of Tbilisi went to the scene of the accident and announced that the oligarch MP Valeri Gelashvili was to blame. His deputies backed him, calling for Valeri Gelashvili to be punished. The reason Mayor Gigi Ugulava blames the MP is because Gelashvili once wanted to buy the land the school is located on. He even proposed to the school Director and to the Minister of Education that he would build another school on a different site, so he could then use the original site for his own purposes. His proposal was however denied, hence people suspect he chose to have the school destroyed.

Mayor Gigi Ugulava stated, “I can say openly that Valeri Gelashvili is involved in this business, such oligarchs should not be able to blackmail the state and the government, they should be punished for their crimes.”

MP Bidzina Bregadze called Gelashvili a bandit and demanded that he be fired from Parliament. “There is no place for such bandits in government; I will do everything to get him expelled from Parliament.”

Such announcements were made by other MPs and they asked the Head of the Parliament to create a committee to investigate the business activities of Gelashvili. The Parliament places responsibility for the investigation with the Committee of Procedural Issues.

Gelashvili is not currently in Georgia. He will return next week and will appeal in court against Ugulava and Bregadze. His attorney has already prepared a civil claim concerning the humiliation he has been caused. According to the claim, Bregadze and Ugulava had no right to blame him for the arson attack; it is a violation of the law regarding the presumption of innocence and of the Georgian Constitution (Constitution - Clause 40, the Civil Code – Clause 18). 

“What the opposition is talking about is intentional provocation and demands an answer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Was the crime when the MP in question was beaten ever investigated? I will remind you. Gelashvili was severely beaten in June 2005. The investigation did not reveal criminals or even suspects. The board has not done anything to open that case. After such a thing, the government should not be talking about honesty”, said David Berdzenishvili, a representative of the opposition. 

The MP David Gamkrelidze wants the government to be free of killers; “It would be better to investigate the cases – actually open them and let Merabishvili [the Minister of Internal Affairs] quit his position as Minister. The government should be clean of criminals and killers.”

The lawyer Tina Khidasheli, a Gelashvili party member, is sure that the defamation of Gelashvili was planned when he had his first conflict with the government last year. The Valeri Gelashvili Company built the presidential apartments, the cost of which was to be paid later. When the time came to settle the debt, the government decided not to pay. This chain of events and the small matter of the outstanding 5 million lari, ultimately led to the terrible beating that Gelashvili received.

On March 2nd, when pupils and teachers came to school, they saw posters of Gelashvili had been placed on the walls saying: “He burnt the school.” Unknown men even asked the pupils to hang such placards on the wall and promised that they would get good marks if they did. “We did not do it”, said the children. Nino Gershevanidze, the Director of the school suggested to everyone that they should not get involved in politics.

The Committee of Procedural Issues is now investigating Gelashvili’s businesses. The results of the investigation should be known in a month’s time.

Eka Gulua

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