Tbilisi Mayor Kaladze claims no city hall employees have been dismissed on political grounds

Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze has denied reports that employees are being dismissed from the capital’s municipal services on political grounds. However, he also emphasised that it was ‘completely incomprehensible’ for someone to work at City Hall while simultaneously criticising its policies.

Tbilisi City Hall was among the institutions where some employees signed a petition against the Georgian Dream government’s decision on 28 November to suspend the country’s EU membership bid. Following this, numerous employees were dismissed, many of whom viewed these decisions as the government's response to their criticism.

In an interview with the pro-government channel Rustavi 2 on Monday, Kaladze denied any political motives, stating that ‘we have never made personnel decisions based on political grounds’.

According to the mayor, a reorganisation is currently underway at city hall, which was announced before the employees signed the petition.

‘Reorganisation is happening — some will leave, some will join. Over 200 people signed [the petition]. If I wanted to fire people on political grounds, I would have dismissed all of them, right?’ he added.

‘No one can provide a single example where I or anyone else demanded an employee’s personal support for me or Georgian Dream’, Kaladze stated, adding that among the municipality’s 30,000 employees, not all support the ruling party, which is ‘their right’.

However, Kaladze also said that it was ‘completely incomprehensible to work with me in the morning on matters important for the city and then criticise me and undermine me in the evening’.

‘Criticism is acceptable; that’s not an issue at all. But when someone goes around intimidating and blackmailing employees to force them to sign the statement — there are screenshots, there is concrete evidence of how our employees were blackmailed and threatened into signing this document’, he claimed, though he did not provide specific examples of such alleged coercion.

The November–December petitions were met with harsh statements from government officials at the time.

‘Last week, we announced a reorganisation at City Hall. So, this is good — it’s a self-lustration’, Kaladze said on 1 December, commenting on the petition.

Shortly after, on 4 December, Kaladze called the signing of petitions by municipality employees ‘sabotage’, claiming it was part of a ‘coup plan’. He noted that such an attempt would ‘not go unanswered, of course, within the framework of the constitution and the law’.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze also commented on the criticisms by government employees, referring to the petitions as a ‘self-cleansing process’.

Shortly after the petitions were published, Georgian Dream first proposed and then passed a law that simplified reorganisation processes in public institutions.

Fired for speaking out — the ‘cleansing’ of Georgia’s civil service

Dozens of civil servants have been dismissed after speaking out against the halting of Georgia’s EU membership process.

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