Ahali’s Gvaramia: Opposition Alliance is under strain, but keeping it together is only thing on my mind

“Those of us fighting for the future cannot afford to keep our gaze permanently fixed on the past. We carry a greater responsibility than merely venting our nerves and nursing our grievances,” declared Nika Gvaramia, one of the leaders of the Opposition Alliance.

Gvaramia acknowledged that internal processes within the Alliance are fraught, and said that his overriding objective is to hold it together.

“Look at the campaign of mutual vilification within the opposition that I find utterly bewildering; not only inside the Alliance, but across the opposition more broadly, though directed with particular intensity at the Alliance. I mean not only what is happening internally, but the statements coming from others. Then look at what is happening within the protest movement; there, too, a kind of mutual consumption. Friends, when things like this occur simultaneously, with such striking convergence in timing, in themes, and in methods, it is never by accident. Those of us who are fighting for the future cannot permanently face backwards. We cannot. We bear a far greater responsibility than scratching our own nerves and hearts; a far greater one. The processes within the Alliance are difficult, I’ll say it again, and I mean it: nobody ever imagined this would be easy, and I don’t think so now either.

The only thing I am thinking about is keeping the Alliance intact. That is my task. I did not conceive this Alliance; I inherited it, with its existing membership and with the shared desire for these people to stand together. From the very moment of its inception, there was a risk it would not endure, as many of its members had previously been entirely out of contact with one another. I will say it once more: if we remain trapped in the past and live by our traumas, the country will remain trapped in the past, because there is simply no other way forward than pulling the country out of its crisis as one. I also want to remind everyone: our coalition was blamed for an alleged failure of unity in 2024. Let everyone reflect on this, had that actually happened during the election campaign itself, what an electoral catastrophe it would have been,” Gvaramia said.