Georgian ex-President Saakashvili admits his supporters ran pages spreading fake news against President Zurabishvili and ruling party

Saakashvili was speaking about the criminal prosecution of his supporters, when he mentioned the Facebook pages. Photo: AP.

Agenda.ge, 21 Dec 2018 - 18:41, Tbilisi,Georgia

Georgian Former President Mikheil Saakashvili stated in a live video that his supporters, former head of the Interior Ministry press office Guram Donadze and the United National Movement-affiliated Free Zone organisation activist Parnaoz  Chkadua, ran Facebook pages which released fake news about the ruling party endorsed presidential candidate Salome Zurabishvili and the ruling party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili during the pre-election period, Netgazeti reports.

Saakashvili was speaking about Donadze, who has been sent to prison for the high-profile murder case of Buta Robakidze, when he said that the real reason for Donadze’s arrest was the page “Resident Salome” and not his role in the murder case.

He also said that Chkadua has been charged with abusing police and hooliganism supposedly committed in 2014.

However, the real reason behind his charge is that Chkadua ran the page “Official Agency for Mocking Kotsi (referring to the Georgian Dream ruling party). The page was created to oppose Ivanishvili’s Russian propaganda,” Saakashvili said.

He stated that the Facebook pages “created serious problems” for Ivanishvili.

Both of the Facebook pages released news regarding Zurabishvili and the ruling team and many of the news items were fake.

For instance one of the fake news items cited Zurabishvili by saying that the father of murdered teenager Zaza Saralidze will be sent to prison, another cited Zurabishvili by saying that “the first president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia and the residents of the Samegrelo region are traitors.