“Georgia under Saakashvili similar to Egypt under Mubarak” – ex-Georgia MP

The current regime in Georgia is similar to that of Mubarak-era Egypt, Tsotne Bakuria, a former Georgian MP and expert on politics in the Caucasus, told RT.

“We are talking about a country that has no opposition represented in real political life,” he said. “We have one president, we have one parliament and Saakashvili treats Georgia as his own system.”According to Bakuria, Saakashvili is as much an autocratic leader as Hosni Mubarak was in Egypt.  “We have political prisoners, we have no free media in Georgia and we have an autocratic ruler whose reckless behavior and impulsive political decisions already played a very negative role for my country,” he said. Bakuria added that the events that unfolded in August 2008 in South Ossetia have cast a big shadow on Georgia’s reputation abroad.  “It is clear to everyone that Saakashvili fired the first shots,” he said. “Saakashvili was the one who ordered shelling heavy artillery over the sleeping city of Tskhinval on August 7, 11:55 pm Georgian time, as has been proven by the report issued by a bipartisan group of the United Nations, so this drastically changed the minds of lots of people in Washington, DC, including that of the current Obama administration.”“I am afraid that a label of an aggressor will play a very, very bad role in the near future for the country’s development in so many ways – in terms of the relationship between the US and Georgia,” Bakuria added.