Georgians go to the polls on Saturday to vote in local elections that could escalate a political standoff between the ruling party and the opposition a day after the arrest of ex-president and opposition politician Mikheil Saakashvili.
Saakashvili, who left Georgia in 2013 and was sentenced to prison in absentia in 2018, was arrested on Friday after he returned to Georgia and called on his supporters to vote for the opposition and stage a post-election street protest.Georgia's authorities had warned he would be arrested if he returned and President Salome Zourabichvili said that she would not pardon the 53-year-old after his arrest and accused him of deliberately trying to destabilise the country.
The head of the main opposition party, the United National Movement that Saakashvili founded, was arrested in February and released in May amid a push by the European Union to broker a deal to ease the standoff between the government and the party.The deal had said that Georgian Dream would need to call snap parliamentary elections if it failed to garner 43% of the vote at Saturday's local elections.
The return and arrest of Saakashvili on Friday has thrown in another wild card in the country of less than four million people.
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