Vakhtang Dzabiradze: Figures are being arrested who are no longer given a chance to return to politics - Garibashvili, Liluashvili, and others will not be able to come back either
“If Ivanishvili needs it politically, tomorrow anyone - even Irakli Kobakhidze - could be found entangled in corruption. Figures are being arrested who are no longer given a chance to return to politics - Garibashvili, Liluashvili, and others will not be able to come back either,” political analyst Vakhtang Dzabiradze said, assessing the arrest of former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.
As Dzabiradze explained on PalitraNews’ program “Day’s Newsroom,” under authoritarian regimes politics is conducted under the banner of fighting corruption. According to him, in such cases the system itself does not change, but the fight against corruption makes it possible to clear the vertical of power, because “if you cannot change the system, you must have a high-ranking official to punish.”
In the same context, Dzabiradze also noted that “Garibashvili was sacrificed not by Ivanishvili personally, but by the system, because there was nothing else to offer society.”
“When we say that there is systemic corruption in the country, that means that someone was bringing that 6 million to Irakli Garibashvili. Where did that money come from? There was talk about so-called kickbacks, corruption related to the management of state property, and so on. A system has been created through which money is accumulated, and the money accumulated went to Garibashvili.
It is very interesting what the authorities say - that he had some enterprise that was not registered and he was convicted under the relevant article. What kind of profit must it have had for a businessman to keep 6 million at home - that means it must have been an incredible enterprise!
We learned that Irakli Garibashvili was arrested, but did this eliminate corruption itself? Back in 1972, for the first time under the communist regime, Shevardnadze said that corruption had emerged somewhere. Since then, governments have changed, and our society has lived with corruption - there has not been a single day when the country lived without corruption. This requires systemic reform, which the authorities are incapable of carrying out.
Corruption exists everywhere, but systemic corruption exists only in authoritarian and totalitarian countries; elsewhere, of course, such corruption does not exist,” Dzabiradze said.
According to Dzabiradze, arrests of other former high-ranking officials and new scandals are not expected in the near future, because “the authorities now need to digest this nightmare.”
He added that it is not in the authorities’ interest for public opinion to form around the idea that the entire Georgian Dream party was entangled in corruption.
