Bidzina Ivanishvili first neutralized the Patriarch and now he has finally gotten rid of him, and now all that remains for complete happiness is to get rid of me. He will not succeed! - the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, writes on Facebook.

As Saakashvili notes, bringing him to say goodbye to the Patriarch would have been “the right thing to do towards unity, but statesmen take state steps, while Ivanishvili acted like Ivanishvili.”

“The Patriarch’s funeral was a rare chance for Ivanishvili to take a state step at least once and let me say goodbye to the Patriarch, which I requested, as the spiritual son of the Patriarch and also the father of Nikusha, the Patriarch’s baptized son.

Letting me do it would have been the right thing to do, aimed at unity, but state steps are taken by statesmen, while Ivanishvili acted as Ivanishvili, i.e. as an enemy of statehood.

In general, to tell the truth, no matter how offended one may get, two people always irritated Ivanishvili the most: the Patriarch (whom he addressed with a scolding tone, never kissed his hand and undermined him in every way) and me.

Ivanishvili first neutralized the Patriarch and now he has finally gotten rid of him, and now all that remains for complete happiness is to get rid of me. He will not succeed!”, - writes Mikheil Saakashvili.