After Irakli Kobakhidze's comment, who said on Imedi LIVE that withdrawing Zurab Pololikashvili's candidacy in the UNWTO elections was the right decision, BMG addressed Zurab Pololikashvili with two main questions:
1. Against the background of maintaining silence on ongoing events in Georgia from the position of UNWTO Secretary General, what did the GD party exchange his candidacy for? and 2. Could all this be part of Russia's games, since Russia was expelled from the organization during his tenure as Secretary General?
Zurab Pololikashvili refrained from answering these questions, but wrote to BMG:
"They were doing it silently. No one asked me anything. I never had the desire to withdraw my candidacy from the elections."
Zurab Pololikashvili's wording was slightly different when commenting on TV Formula. He said that for more than three weeks, he was writing and calling Irakli Kobakhidze, but he was hiding.
"Let him come out and say what he exchanged my candidacy for! I represent neither the deep state nor the global war party."
Irakli Kobakhidze responded on Imedi LIVE:
"I don't want to go into details about the reason for the decision. One of the reasons was that certain states began summoning our ambassadors with a kind of demarche regarding the fact that we presented our candidacy in the UN system for the third time. In the UN system, candidates are not usually elected to such leadership positions more than twice. This was one of the reasons, it was not considered particularly democratic when the same candidate was nominated for such a position for the third time. There were additional reasons that I don't want to get into."
Pololikashvili was first elected as Secretary-General in 2018 and re-elected in January 2021 for a second term covering 2022–2025. Nominated by Georgia, he won 76% of the secret ballot during the 113th session of the UNWTO Executive Council, defeating Bahrain’s candidate, Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa.
