Money, power and women

The story about money, that is, about the sponsorship of the Georgian opposition has turned into a series. After yesterday's "debriefing", when all the TV channels broadcasted the meeting of Levan Gachechiladze and David Gamkrelidze with the former Minister of Foreign Affairs Kakha Targamadze, a "political deal" is apparently going to take place in Georgia. On returning from Yerevan, Mikhail Saakashvili decided to meet with other delegates to offer the opposition sponsorship from the budget instead of from the enemy's pocket. Kakha Targamadze is listed among the latter. The official Tbilisi associates him either with Russia, or directly with the Kremlin.

Mikhail Saakashvili promises to announce "direct initiatives" to make the party sponsorship transparent, the VZGLYAD newspaper reports. According to the Georgian legislation, the oppositional parties should be sponsored from the budget; however, after large-scale protest actions they do not receive any budgetary means. The authorities' estimation is quite logic: no revolution or change of power is possible without money. But the restless oppositionists went to seek funding abroad, which was the reason of the scandal that eventually broke out. The Georgian TV channels broadcasted a video record posted in the Internet, showing the oppositional leaders' meeting with the former Minister of Internal Affairs Kakha Targamadze.

The parliamentarians who have been discussing the sources of the oppositional sponsorship for the whole of last week hailed accusations on the oppositionists. First, one of the leaders of the ruling majority Georgi Gabashvili accused Burjanadze: "Today, the main source of the opposition's sponsorship is Burjanadze and her political party. I believe that both the public and the opposition have the right to know how and from where the money comes from and on what it is spent. We saw the scene where the representatives of a single party bought Kalashnikovs and handed bats to the action participants".

It was yesterday that Gabashvili switched onto Levan Gachechiladze and David Gamkrelidze. "I cannot provide a legal evaluation of whether this meeting was the breach of the law and whether it is possible to initiate a criminal case on the fact. I am neither a law-enforcement officer, nor a lawyer; still, the fact is that the opposition had received a promise to be sponsored from Kakha Targamadze who is a national of Russia, and this is the breach of the law; the moral aspect of the case is more important than the legal assessment of this fact", - Georgi Gabashvili elocuted, GHN reports.

The oppositionists denied all the accusations, saying that they never asked Targamadze to give them money but, on the contrary, were trying to clear up Saakashvili's secret contacts with Russia. Gachechiladze, in his on-air interview to radio Utsnobi explained that "Kakha Targamadze possesses essential information. For instance, the 2003 Rose Revolution was sponsored by Soros Foundation, criminal authorities, as well as the former head of the Georgian special service Igor Georgadze who had fled the country in 1995", - the oppositionist declared. Levan Gachechiladze also claimed to have received "information on the aspects and ways used by Mikhail Saakashvili to satisfy the Russian authorities".

According to GHN, another participant of the scandalous meeting, David Gamkrelidze, stated that "we have got information from Targamadze that Putin's administration prohibits the Georgian businessmen working in Russia to sponsor the opposition. Besides, we have learnt many interesting facts about Khubutia and Ebralidze".

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