During a special briefing on December 22, GD PM Irakli Kobakhidze twice threatened President Salome Zurabishvili with imprisonment.
President Zurabishvili maintains that she remains a legitimate president before the Parliament is legitimately constituted through free and fair elections. She considers the election of Mikheil Kavelashvili by the one-party electoral college and his planned inauguration on December 29 as illegitimate. Referring to these assertions, Kobakhidze stated:
“Salome Zurabishvili will have to leave office on December 29. Let us see where she continues to live – beyond the bars or behind the bars. I think she would have enough sense not to violate the Criminal Code,” Kobakhidze asserted. “I assure you, nothing much will happen until December 29. “Deep state” won’t win in Georgia, and radical opposition won’t win. There, of course, cannot be any serious plan from the side of the radical opposition, including Zurabishvili.” He continued, “If we imagine a theoretical scenario […] of her barricading herself inside the presidential residence, this is the crime foreseen by the Criminal Code. Let me repeat that nobody may want to send a 72-year-old woman to prison, but in deciding to act this way, she is sacrificing all those people who may be with her inside the presidential residence. I repeat – I hope that she would have a sense of not violating the Criminal Code and not letting others do so and risk multi-year prison terms.”
Kobakhidze also spoke about the potential imprisonment of Zurabishvili in another context. He argued that “there are no legal grounds for scheduling repeat elections” – something that President Zurabishvili and the opposition have called for. Saying that the Central Election Commission has validated the election results, while the Constitutional Court has ruled on the appeal by the President, Kobakhidze said the legal grounds for calling the repeat elections have been exhausted. As for snap elections, they can only be called if the government loses the vote of confidence, which did not happen, he continued.
“President making such a statement [calling for repeat or snap elections – eds.] would thus be comical, but apart from being comical, this is also a criminal offense. The criminal code contains specific provisions that foresee multi-year prison terms,” Kobakhidze said.
“She [Zurabishvili] has until 21:00 today to think. I hope that someone smart would advise her. Let us see who wins, someone smart, or Zurabishvili,” Kobakhidze concluded.
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