national security towards unknown assailants, which lasted until October 30th, 2012 as the assailants were mostly killed in action by security forces, and the remaining were arrested. The United National Movement lost majority of seats to the opposition coalition Bidzina Ivanishvili–Georgian Dream in the 2012 election. As envisaged by the constitution, Merabishvili and his government resigned on October 11, 2012, continuing to be an acting prime minister until Bidzina Ivanishvili was approved by the parliament on October 25, 2012. On October 15, 2012, Merabishvili was elected as secretary-general of the United National Movement, pledging to a "modern, new type of party". Arrest and sentence On May 21, 2013, Merabishvili and Zurab Tchiaberashvili, governor of Kakheti and former Minister of Health, were arrested in connection to an investigation into alleged misspending of GEL 5.2 million public funds on their party activists during the 2012 election campaign, leading to accusations of political vendetta leveled by the United National Movement against the Ivanishvili government. On February 17, 2014 Merabishvili was sentenced to five years in jail after being found guilty of abuse of office, bribery of voters and inefficient use of budget funds. The Merabishvili defense team appealed the sentence. The opposition said it was a witch hunt of the former government. In September 2016 Merabishvili was further sentenced to 6,5 years in prison on charges of ordering the beating of the opposition parliament member Valeri Gelashvili. Government of Georgia in 2013 has officially invited OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights for Monitoring the trials of former high level officials. Monitoring group stated, that “Based on the above observations regarding specific fair trial rights difficulties – often of a systemic nature – it can be concluded that the respect of fair trial rights in the monitored cases was not fully guaranteed by the Georgian criminal justice system”. And particularly about the case against Mr Merabishvili has emphasized, that “In a case where the defendant was convicted of exceeding official powers, the court failed to say what the limits of the defendant’s powers were, and how the defendant exceeded those limits, aside from noting that the defendant did not have the authority to commit illegal acts. In order to assess whether and how a defendant exceeded official powers, the limits of those powers must first be established”. Therefore, even the minimum standards for substantiation of Judicial Decisions were not met. In 2015