The third president of Georgia is calling on citizens to prepare a “resistance movement.” To achieve this, as Mikheil Saakashvili wrote on the social network Facebook, “people with strategic vision and great courage are needed.”
“This corresponds very accurately to today’s situation. Do you know how and why the ‘National Movement’ was created? In 2001, my friend and a very fine journalist, Giorgi Sanaia (Vakho’s brother), was murdered. A great many people took to the streets in protest and demanded Shevardnadze’s resignation. It was a spontaneous and unorganized protest that had already fizzled out and lost its momentum by the third day.
It was then that I told Levan Berdzenishvili that we must create a nationwide movement with the goal of carrying out a revolution, and thus the UNM (United National Movement) was formed. It had many activists in the regions who knew they had to bring about a revolution. We established a school in Tskhvarichamia, where we trained all activists in revolutionary tactics.
I had no illusions that Shevardnadze and the corrupt establishment would relinquish power without a revolution. Patarkatsishvili and Ivanishvili were already lying in wait. Shevardnadze’s own family wanted to see Gia Chanturia (the head of ‘Georgian Oil’) as his successor, but after the elections were rigged against us, as expected, the revolutionary scenario thwarted their plans. But for this, a resistance movement must be prepared, rather than built on the expectation that everything will happen on its own. This requires people with strategic vision and great courage,” Saakashvili writes.
