Gakharia party’s Sharashidze: Banning the party means stripping our 12 MPs of their seats

“Cancelling our seats is directly tied to abolishing the party. Georgian Dream itself is cancelling our seats and thereby bringing back the one-party Parliament we had for a year,” said MP Giorgi Sharashidze from the Gakharia for Georgia party.

He said the purpose of including Gakharia for Georgia in the constitutional lawsuit is to strip the opposition of its seats in Parliament.

“That’s Georgian Dream for you: it twists everything to suit itself. So what is going on at the Constitutional Court is a political process, not a legal one. Our turn to speak in court will probably come tomorrow. The public will recognise that our party’s inclusion in the lawsuit was entirely artificial, designed solely to annul the mandates of 12 opposition MPs in parliament.

I want to explain clearly what Georgian Dream is trying to do. They brazenly claim that they will let us keep our seats. Excuse me, but what seats are they letting us keep? These 12 seats belong to the party. These were not majoritarian elections. Nearly 200,000 citizens did not vote for specific individuals; they voted for a party, Gakharia for Georgia. Of course, banning the party means banning the seats. Now Georgian Dream wants to save face and tell people: ‘We are banning the party, but if they want to work in Parliament, here, go ahead, here are their seats.’ Excuse me, but that’s not how it works. By banning the party, Georgian Dream is banning the seats too.

Here is one example to explain it. If one of our 12 MPs had to step down for health reasons, who would replace them if the party list has been scrapped? That example shows the absurdity of this argument by Georgian Dream, and Papuashvili is. It cannot and will not work like that. Cancelling the seats is directly tied to abolishing the party. Georgian Dream itself is cancelling our seats and thereby bringing back the one-party Parliament we had for a year. They want to push through laws that are ruinous for the country without the public finding out anything about them. Proof of this is the gambling amendments that Parliament is now fast-tracking,” Sharashidze said.