Member of Parliament
Merabishvili's direct involvement with politics began in November 1999 when he was elected to the Parliament of Georgia on the party ticket of the Union of Citizens of Georgia (UCG), chaired by then-President Eduard Shevardnadze. Merabishvili was a member of an influential and vocal, yet small, group of the UCG faction, known as “reformers” led by Zurab Zhvania and Mikheil Saakashvili and which called for more radical and Western-oriented political reforms.
In April 2001, with a simmering conflict in the UCG, Merabishvili, then a chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Economic Policy, became the first and, at that time, the only leading member of the party to openly criticise Shevardnadze. In an interview with the Washington Post, Merabisvhili stated Shevardnadze was “tired” and lacked the political will to fight corruption. Shevardnadze downplayed the criticism, attributing Merabishvili’s statement to the latter's youth and inexperience.
In 2002, Merabishvili became Secretary General of Mikheil Saakashvili’s newly formed opposition National Movement. He was energetically involved in the protest movement following the November 2003 parliamentary elections which led to Shevardnadze’s resignation in the bloodless Rose Revolution.
Read more about this topic: Vano Merabishvili
Famous quotes containing the words member of, member and/or parliament:
“I cannot be indifferent to the assassination of a member of my profession, We should be obliged to shut up business if we, the Kings, were to consider the assassination of Kings as of no consequence at all.”
—Edward VII (1841–1910)
“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time when I had not yet grasped the significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew—and I knew it was important to know—that Papa worked hard all day long.”
—Vivian Gornick (b. 1935)
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)