Juglander Review
Mktvartvelo: Conservative newspaper confirms departure of controversial former deputy director
Goga Kapanadze, a prominent Mktvartvelian journalist, has confirmed that he will be leaving
Akheli Ambebi, fourth largest newspaper in Mktvartvelo, after twenty-seven years writing for the newspaper. He was Akheli Ambebi deputy director from 2005 to early 2023, likely the most well-known journalist of that newspaper after Merab Aprasidze, who was editor-in-chief of the newspaper from 1997 to 2022. Kapanadze continued to write daily for the newspaper in the opinion section, which he previously headed, until six months ago, when his column became a weekly one (although he continued to write in his own blog, which is hosted in the newspaper online website).
Kapanadze gained a reputation as an independent conservative opinion writer, which articles could encourage as much debate as uproar and they were known for their sharp prose and controversial opinions, particularly against those he considered enemies. In the last years, former Prime Minister Bidzina Samkharadze turned to be one of his most recurrent targets, a man which Kapanadze described in one article "as the most serious threat that our nation has faced in decade, mostly for his weakness and his delusions, rather than for his malice, which he does not possess".
His announcement of departure coincides with his last controversy three weeks ago. In an article titled "New Television, Old Vices", he harshly criticized Channel 7, a Mktvartvelo's television channel established in 2022, which he described as a "personal vehicles of the Peasant Sisterhood" (which was understood by many as a reference of the prominent Birinseli sisters, who are the main shareholders of the television channel) and called it "Ketevan TV", in a likely reference to Brzdmtsveli Ketevan, causing an uproar in social media. In a message in his blog a week later, Kapanadze assured those who accused them of being against the person or the institution of the head of state "could not be more wrong", but he insisted that he did not feel that his words required further explication. For its part, Gaertianebuli Kaghaldi Inc., the company which own the newspaper, assured that Kapanadze's departure "had been planned and agreed by both sides" since several months ago and it was not caused by "any recent developments". In the statement, although it confirmed that Kapanadze will not continue to work in any of the media owned by the company, as it was previously rumoured, they "express the gratitude for the work of Mr. Kapanadze in the last decades in the newspaper...and wish him the best of luck in his future projects".
It was not, however, that Kapanadze was involved in a controversy. Five months ago, commenting to an interview in which a prominent lawyer proposed a path to citizenship for the so-called
Nakhevratsarieli community, the stateless Mktvartvelo-born non-citizens, he declared he was not personally opposed about such a legal path for those who were able to undoubtedly prove their integration and assimilation to the native culture, as he argued that the existence of a "pariah community" is the source of serious social and cultural problems, and it is an stigma for several generations of lawmakers and social reformers. Instead, he proposed the government the establishment an official national program in which the government could pay foreign governments, either their countries of origin or third ones, for their permanent accommodation in exchange of an economic compensation, so those "whose integration was a failure" or "the wider number possible" if "there was not a possible legal path" to citizenship for members of the community, could be legally deported. "It will be costly", Kapanadze argued, "but an effective method of solving a social problem which has become as annoying as serious". The article received visibly criticism by several non-profit and civic organizations, and even threats of litigation against the newspaper, which the journalist assured in his daily blog weeks later that "as usual, led to nowhere".
In an interview, Kapanadze has declared that "sometimes, one must be ready to close a chapter to start a new one" and he surely does so "without a regret of the path that left me today and the words that I have written". He assured he still has "a lot of energy" to "start new projects, whatever they are and wherever they lead me".
