De Facto Ex-PM Shamba Says Breakaway Abkhazia Is in Crisis
By Tea Mariamidze
Thursday, August 30
Former “Prime Minister’ of Georgia’s Russian-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia, Sergey Shamba says the breakaway region is in crisis.
“We are in a deep crisis, and if we do not get out of it, we will have to kneel and ask Georgia or Russia to allow us to join them,” Shamba says.
He added that the so-called President of Abkhazia Raul Khajimba and the de facto government are unable to change the situation for the better.
“They are incapable of doing anything. We want someone to improve the current situation. Four years have passed, and we see that this president cannot improve the situation. We need a strong man who starts to act. Everyone recognizes that we are deeply in crisis, both economically and politically,” the politician says.
According to him, if the de facto government fails to find the way out of the current situation, the fight for “independence” from Georgia makes no sense.
“Since we gained the independence, we have created a state that we never had before. We have received such freedom that we have never had. And we cannot benefit from this because there are incompetent people in power,” Shamba stressed.
In mid-August, the so-called ex-pm stated that Georgians are not his enemies and he has many friends in Georgia.
He also added that thinks that the leadership of occupied Abkhazia should launch a dialogue with the Georgian side.
Shamba is a senior politician who currently is a member of the so-called People's Assembly of Abkhazia and Chairman of “United Abkhazia.”
He was so-called Prime Minister of breakaway Abkhazia under de facto President Sergei Bagapsh from 13 February 2010 until 27 September 2011.
Between 1997 and 2010, he was de facto Minister for Foreign Affairs under both Bagapsh and his predecessor Vladislav Ardzinba, with only a half-year interruption in 2004.
