Tbilisi City Court has ordered the pre-trial arrest of Coalition for Change co-leader Nika Gvaramia for refusing to pay bail in his trial over his refusal to attend parliament’s anti-UNM commission.
Gvaramia was arrested on Friday outside the Rustavi Prison, where he had travelled along with supporters to present himself as his court hearing was underway. After his sentence was announced, he called the police from outside the prison and asked them to proceed by placing him in jail directly.
‘I obey the constitution — not the Georgian Dream Constitution’, Gvaramia wrote earlier on Friday. ‘If I have to pay for this by being in jail, okay then, I will pay the price. I know for sure that I am right in front of my conscience and in front of Georgia’, Gvaramia said.
‘It will be a black page in history if we do not manage to save our country’, he added.
Gvaramia had been ordered to pay ₾30,000 ($11,000) bail for not appearing before the parliamentary commission, which he refused to do.
Two other opposition leaders, Irakli Okruashvili and Zurab Girchi Japaridze, have also been jailed for refusing to pay bail over the same issue.
The commission was initiated by the government and is being led by MP Tea Tsulukiani, with the goal of investigating alleged crimes committed by the formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM) party.
The government has said they will ban the party over these crimes. They have also promised to ban all other major opposition parties, even those with no connection to the UNM, for being part of what they term the ‘collective UNM’.The Georgian authorities previously sentenced Gvaramia to three and a half years in prison in May 2022, for allegedly embezzling money as the director of TV company Rustavi 2. He was subsequently pardoned by then–president Salome Zourabichvili.
