Tengiz Sigua

Tengiz Sigua (9 November 1934 – 21 January 2020) was a Georgian politician who served as Prime Minister of the country.[2]

Sigua was an engineer by profession[2] and entered politics on the eve of the Soviet Union's collapse. In 1990 he led an expert group of the bloc "Round Table-Free Georgia". Following the first multiparty elections in Georgia, he was elected Chair of the Ministers' Council of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic on 14 November 1990.[2]

He was the prime minister in Zviad Gamsakhurdia's government from 15 November 1990 to 18 August 1991. However, he resigned in August 1991 after disagreements with the president.[2] He later remarked that the newspapers used to call Gamsakhurdia "Caucasian Saddam Hussein".[3] Along with the National Guard leader Tengiz Kitovani and the paramilitary leader Jaba Ioseliani, he became a leader of the uneasy opposition which launched a violent coup against the President in December 1991-January 1992. After Gamsakhurdia's fall, he became Prime Minister in the Georgian interim government (Military Council, later transformed into the State Council) which was joined by Eduard Shevardnadze) on 6 January 1992.[2] He was reappointed Prime Minister on 8 November 1992 by the newly elected Parliament.

He resigned on 6 August 1993 after the Parliament rejected the budget submitted by the government.[4] He remained as an MP, led the National Liberation Front opposition party and backed a military solution of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict.

In an interview with the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, Sigua accused the Georgian side of starting the 2008 war: "We started the war in 2008. We started to shell Tskhinvali and this, after the death of Russian peacekeepers, gave Russian troops the right to actively interfere".[5]