President Saakashvili told thousands of supporters at an outdoor campaign rally in Samtredia on Thursday that the October 1 parliamentary elections would be “decisive” for Georgia as the future of the country would be at stake, not the fate of political parties.

He also said that those who want to take Georgia back into past and those people, who in the past were “sequestering budget on monthly basis”, “seizing pensions” and those who “filled the country with criminality” were now trying to regain power.

“October 1 [parliamentary election] is their last chance and we should do everything in order not to let them use this chance and in order to get rid of them once and for all in order to make no place for them in Georgia,” Saakashvili said.
 
At the rally he formally named a respected doctor Merab Janelidze as ruling United National Movement party’s majoritarian MP candidate for Samtredia single-mandate constituency, where his rival from Bidzina Ivanishvili-led Georgian Dream coalition is a retired footballer Kakhi Kaladze, who was the captain of the Georgian national team and who won the Champions League on two occasions with AC Milan.

At the rally Saakashvili used Kaladze’s two own goals in World Cup qualifying match against Italy in 2009 to attack him and said: “A large brigade of own goal scorers have stormed Georgia and they will never win.” 

“For those who say ‘what difference it makes who started the [August, 2008] war? It does not matter for me who started the war – Russia or Georgia’, it probably also does not matter against whom you will score a goal – against your own team or against a rival,” Saakashvili said.

Kaladze apologized once again for own goals when he made appearance at an inaugural assembly of Ivanishvili’s public movement in December, 2011 and said: “It would be good if those people, who have been ‘scoring goals’ against own country for their entire life, will also apologize.”

Earlier this month Kaladze praised his rival from UNM for a majoritarian MP seat in Samtredia, Merab Janelidze, as “very honest and dignified man.”

“I personally do not know him, but I’ve heard nothing but positive about him; I promise locals here that after my victory this man, if he agrees, will become chief doctor of Samtredia, because our country and our municipality needs such professionals,” Kaladze told Info-9 news agency on August 5.