Public Defender Sozar Subari has denied having plans to go into politics, at least not before his term in office ends in September 2009.

Subari said in an interview with the Batumi-based weekly newspaper, Batumelebi, that such speculation was “of course not true.”

Media speculation about Subari’s possible political ambitions intensified after he established the Public Movement for Freedom and Justice – “an informal” and “not a political organization,” Subari called it at the presentation on September 30. Just recently the Georgian daily, Rezonansi, reported quoting Levan Gachechiladze, a former opposition presidential candidate, as saying that Subari planned to join the opposition at a protest rally on November 7.

Subari also said in the newspaper interview that no political party had asked him to join.

“In general I cooperate with political parties; a public movement has been set up recently, which also involves politicians – not political parties – non-governmental organizations and individual citizens,” Subari said. “Some say that setting up a public movement is something beyond the Public Defender’s functions, but that’s not right.”

He said that when the authorities remain “deaf” to calls to tackle human rights problems, “then you have to directly appeal to the source of authority – the people.”