Activities of the Odesa Oblast State Administration’s head Mikheil Saakashvili resemble life of a candidate on a campaign trail rather than work of a bureaucrat. Former president of Georgia’s schedule is full of events for the next month, and you would be wrong to think that they will be held in the Odesa region – no, the official, who doubles as the leader of the Epuration Movement, is on a nationwide anti-corruption forum tour, which already brought him to Chernivtsi on February 22, Ivano-Frankivsk on February 23, and Uzhhorod on February 24. At all these events, Saakashvili campaigned for an early election as the only way out of the political crisis.
It was precisely on February 23 that two surveys came out which measured political preferences exhibited by people this month. However, their results were totally opposite. According to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology’s data, Saakashvili’s Epuration Movement could potentially get 3.6 percent of the vote, below the election threshold, while according to a survey conducted by the Horshenin Institute, the Saakashvili Party (a made-up name) would come second and get 12.2 percent. This difference indicates, at least, major political influence on sociology, but the Saakashvili precedent is already being created. What does his activism show?
“There is no doubt that Saakashvili is promoting his own political project,” political analyst Mykhailo Basarab commented for The Day. “Petro Poroshenko assented to its creation earlier, thinking that Saakashvili and his project would be manageable tools in the fight against the president’s opponents. But Saakashvili and his allies inside the Petro Poroshenko Bloc’s parliamentary faction (Mustafa Nayyem, Serhii Leshchenko, etc.) are becoming increasingly independent in their actions. This is confirmed by their attacks on the president’s inner circle and Poroshenko himself. Open and systemic confrontation between Saakashvili and Co. and the president is only a matter of time. This is a more distant prospect. For now, the Odesa governor and his inner circle call for an early legislative election, because they want to form a faction in the next Rada and participate in forming the government, preferably led by Saakashvili. To do this, they have chosen the shortest route – to cause a government crisis, to be followed by the resignation of the government, then sabotage any attempts to form another one in the current legislature. The result they seek is a parliamentary crisis and an early election. This is the short-term goal for the Saakashvili team. Once they make it, the next goal will be taking the office of president.”
