Leader of People’s Party Met Electorate in Gori

Kato Kotolashvili, Shida Kartli

On September 12, presidential candidate Koba Davitashvili met electorate in Gori district. The meeting was organized in the yard of the local office of the People’s Party. Candidate Koba Davitashvili presented details of his pre-election program and future plans to the population. Koba Davitashvili said one of the purposes of his visit in Gori was to collect signatures for the initiation of the draft law. “I collect 200 000 signatures and want to ask you to join our request based on which only citizens of Georgia will be owners of land in our country and not to be sold to foreign citizens. After this constitutional amendments, if a foreign citizen gets hold of the land, he/she will have to give it in,” the candidate told voters.

Koba Davitashvili stressed out some other directions of his election program too. “I think the justice shall be restored but for that purpose we should implement judiciary reform first. Also, it is important to restore social justice. Unfortunately, public and business interests have opposed several times in this country and the government always supported the business. I would like to remind you of the Labor Code – I had first controversy with Margvelashvili about this issue. Unfortunately, passage - “other unbiased circumstances” still remains in the Labor Code, which can become ground for the dismissal of an employee before his/her labor contract expire. The length of the labor contracts shall be expanded either. I think initially employer shall give probation period to the employee and then the labor contract shall be signed for at least one year in order to enable the employee to enjoy vacation too. The provision about maternity leave shall also be amended and the reimbursement shall be increased in order to support improvement of demographic situation in the country.”

The candidate spoke about casinos and gamble games too. Koba Davitashvili said we should prohibit gamble games in Georgia like it is prohibited in our neighboring countries – Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. He said the government worked on this problem, he personally prepared the draft-law but finally “the government supported the business” and the law was not adopted.

The presidential candidates answered the questions of voters. One of them was about insurance system and related problems. “I am author of the healthcare program of the Georgian Dream; I prepared it and promised population that after winning the parliamentary elections the insurance system would be changed. In the past, private companies received money from the state and then did not care about the treatment of patients. Instead, the state funds were to be allocated in non-profit insurance foundation and the entire money was to be spent on the public welfare including doctors and patients. However, this promise was not kept in sake of the business interests,” Davitashvili said.

People asked questions about mortgagers too and Davitashvili said “I know it is a big issue. People hold demonstrations but if you want to resolve this problem, only 20-30 people cannot achieve success. You should organize a serious demonstration because when government sees that only 20-30 people protest something, they will not change the law. The number of protesters is the most important. Elections are coming and it is good instrument to achieve your goals because when government sees many people gathered, they will get afraid not to lose elections for not fulfilling people’s requests,” Davitashvili said.

Voter Zhuzhuna Tsereteli asked the candidate about medical centers in Gori. “Do you know that MPs Basishvili and Tatishvili got hold of medical centers’ network in Gori for 1 lari? What is planned in this direction?”

“Of course, I know about it. Corresponding documentations were presented to the healthcare committee of the parliament as soon as the parliament started working. A commission for the study of privatization procedures was also set up together with the Minister of Healthcare but this commission held just two sessions - nothing more. I say it because the properties seized from the population shall return to the people. The government shall pass decision on it but government is afraid to make this decision. These documents were submitted to the prosecutor’s office long time ago; I personally sent them to the prosecutor’s office but I have not seen any case investigated by this institution yet,” Koba Davitashvili said.

The meeting with the electorate in Gori lasted about one hour after what the presidential candidate went to Kaspi district.