Azernews.Az

If the Georgian court grants the request of the General Prosecutor's Office on the case of the former Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili, it will plunge the country into a totally new reality, President Mikheil Saakashvili wrote in his statement posted on his official Facebook page on May 22.

"We have to understand that if the court grants the prosecutor's office request in connection with taking into custody Vano Merabishvili and Zurab Tchiaberashvili, it will be an extraordinary legal act," the statement says.

According to him, a peaceful transfer of power through elections took place in October last year. "We received a historic chance to become a fully-fledged, successful democracy. However today we face a threat of transformation of the region in an ordinary authoritarian regime, which no doubt will throw the country many years back as a domestic policy and in terms of foreign relations," Saakashvili said.

The president appealed to the government to "think very carefully about the results of these steps and not to put the homeland under attack."

On May 22 at night, the General Prosecutor's Office of Georgia brought a charge against the former Prime Minister and General Secretary of Mikhail Saakashvili's United National Movement party (UNM) Merabishvili and the governor of Kakheti, former Health Minister Zurab Tchiaberashvili.

The charges were filed several hours after the detention of Merabishvili and Tchiaberashvili. The former government members and close associates of the Georgian president are accused of corrupt practices, abuse of power and embezzlement of public funds.