President of Georgia: Saakashvili has insulted the country and the presidency

Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili has insulted his country and presidency by denouncing his Georgian citizenship, Georgia’s President Georgy Margvelashvili told media in Kutaisi (the parliamentary capital of Georgia).

 “My attitude to all this is very negative. The ex-president should have not denounced his Georgian citizenship. He has insulted the country and the presidency. I think, values are above career, and one of these values is the Georgian citizenship. I cannot understand his behavior,” Interpressnews.ge quotes Margvelashvili as saying.

As EADaily reported earlier, on May 30, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko appointed Mikheil Saakashvili as Odessa Governor.  Poroshenko also granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship. Under the Georgian laws, Saakashvili automatically denounces his Georgian citizenship and the right to involve into the political life of Georgia after receiving the Ukrainian citizenship. Under the Georgian laws, if a person seeks to restore his Georgian citizenship or obtain a double citizenship, he needs to apply to the president of Georgia.

Addressing the given issue, on May 31, Justice Minister of Georgia Tea Tsulukiani said that after Saakashvili’s naturalization in Ukraine, Georgia has lost the legal right to extradite him to Georgia from Ukraine. “Formally, Saakashvili is so far a citizen of Georgia, but he has already received citizenship of another country and can no longer have the Georgian citizenship. Ukraine’s Constitution bans extradition of Ukrainian citizens to another country. As he has Ukrainian citizenship now, we have no legal right to extradite him from Ukraine to Georgia,” she said.

Georgian authorities have put the third president Mikheil Saakashvili on a wanted list for at once several criminal cases.  Meanwhile, Saakashvili and some former high-ranking officials from his team have been appointed to high posts in Ukraine over the last months. Not so long ago, Saakashvili occupied the post of the advisor to the president of Ukraine and the head of the International Council of Reforms of Ukraine.