Ex-PM Nogaideli Sets Up Party
Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 3 Dec.'08 / 20:35

Zurab Nogaideli, a former Prime Minister, who has slammed his former allies in the President Saakashvili’s administration after the August war, announced about setting up a new opposition party Movement for Fair Georgia on December 3.

Members of the party’s main decision-making body are: MP Petre Mamradze, who has just recently quit the ruling party; former lawmakers Shota Gvenetadze and Eduard Surmanidze, as well as former deputy chief of tax department Koba Abuladze and Levan Roinishvili.

In a statement made for the press, Nogaideli said that his party had an ambition to avert “inevitable” political and economic crisis, which the country faces as a result of the authorities’ inappropriate policies and “management.”

MP Mamradze told journalists that if Zurab Nogaideli had been in the Prime Minister in August, there was “a high probability” that the Georgian government would have not yielded to the Russia’s provocation and the war would have been averted, “because Nogaideli is a person, who would have spoken out firmly against it.”

Nogaideli served as Georgia’s Prime Minister from February, 2005 to November, 2007, mainly overseeing economic policies. Nogaideli in March 2008 became chairman of Kala Capital, a group uniting businesses owned by Georgian AC Milan footballer Kakhi Kaladze. He, however, quit the business in September after he lashed out on the authorities accusing them for a failure to avert the war.

Mamuka Glonti, an owner of the Tbilisi-based Maestro TV, has claimed recently that Nogaideli had approached him with a proposal to buy controlling stakes in the TV station; Glonti said that he had refused. Board members of the TV station, including journalist Ia Antadze, said in an interview with the weekly newspaper Batumelebi, that she and other board members were also against of the deal.

MP Givi Targamadze of the ruling party said while commenting on the ex-PM’s party, that he did not believe Nogaideli would succeed.

“It seems that a failure in the business triggered him to become an opposition politician, but I do not think he has much chances of success in politics either,” MP Targamadze told the Rustavi 2 TV on December 3.

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