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Saakashvili calls for new rally outside Ukrainian parliament

Saakashvili announced he was set to organize another rally on Wednesday evening

Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili Alexander Rybin/TASS

Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili

© Alexander Rybin/TASS

KIEV, October 25. /TASS/. Mikhail Saakashvili, the former Georgian President turned Ukrainian oppositionist, announced he was set to organize another rally outside Ukraine’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada, on Wednesday evening.

Saakashvili, who leads the Rukh Novikh Sil (Movement of New Forces) opposition movement, currently stays in a tent camp outside the Ukrainian parliament despite a ruling paving the way for his deportation from the country.

"I knew that it [his depotation - TASS] is possible, but, on the other hand, I returned [to Ukraine], because the people and Ukraine must be protected from the wheeler-dealers in power. That’s why we will gather tomorrow at 7 p.m.," Saakashvili announced on Tuesday evening in a NewsOne TV channel broadcast.

He said Ukraine’s unicameral parliament will begin its weekly plenary session on November 7, during which it will have an opportunity to pass bills demanded by Saakashvili and his supporters. The protesters demand to strip Rada deputies of their parliamentary immunity, amend the election laws, and set up an anticorruption tribunal.

Saakashvili said that if those bills are passed, the protestors will withdraw from Kiev’s governmental district.

"People are waiting for November 7. The president has made his promise, the parliament has made its promise. If they fulfill them, people will leave," he said.

Saakashvili, who has been a stateless person since his Ukrainian citizenship was revoked earlier this year, managed to break into the territory of Ukraine from Poland with the assistance from his supporters on September 10. He has requested a refugee status in Ukraine, but the request was turned down.

A number of activists representing various political forces in Ukraine gathered outside the country’s parliament a week after Saakashvili’s arrival. The rally was organized by a number of opposition political forces, such as the Batkivshchina (Fatherland) and the 5.10 political parties, as well as Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces, and a number of ultra-right organizations. Apart from that, a number of Rada lawmakers with the ruling Pyotr Poroshenko Bloc have joined the protest. Several clashes with the police have been reported earlier this month.

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