There are many opinions about Mikheil Saakashvili, ex-Georgian president turned Ukrainian politician, but we’ll give him this: He knows how to put on a show.
The botched attempt to arrest him on Dec. 5 was a great example. It saw him shouting from a rooftop and later being pulled out of a police car by his supporters. It almost topped the time his supporters literally carried him across Ukraine’s border in September when he was denied entry into the country. One would think that Saakashvili is the No. 1 political foe of President Petro Poroshenko, who stripped his former friend of Ukrainian citizenship this summer.
The pair have been compared to ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. But this narrative is dangerously misleading.
Saakashvili’s fast-paced prosecution is politically motivated, especially in light of many more serious crimes that go uninvestigated and unprosecuted by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, who should resign.
And yet, for Poroshenko, Saakshvili is a useful distraction from more ominous developments, including brazen attacks on the new anti-corruption agencies, highlighting the failure to fight corruption.
While Ukrainians were at their TV screens watching Saakashvili, lawmakers with the ruling coalition slipped in a bill that would take the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine under parliament’s control and another one that would fire an opposition politician as chairman of the parliament’s anti-corruption committee.
Thanks to the pressure from the West, NABU was left untouched — for now.
In September, when Saakashvili’s entertaining return to Ukraine took place, Poroshenko publicly rebuked the idea of an anti-corruption court only to backtrack later, again after international pressure.
This understanding of the Saakashvili-Poroshenko relationship may explain why the opposition politician was released without bail on Dec. 11 by the same Pechersk District Court that six years earlier sent Tymoshenko to prison.
Whenever a diversion is again needed, authorities may try to arrest him again or create some other sideshow. Our advice: Keep an eye on what’s happening outside the circus tent.
