“If 5,000 people turn out on Rustaveli Avenue at the call of figures such as Gvaramia, Vashadze, Japaridze and Salome Zourabichvili, then those figures ought to count themselves fortunate, and such a turnout should be the very measure of their contentment,” Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists.

He added that the government’s principal task is to ensure that every citizen who has lost their way and finds appeal in the likes of Gvaramia, Zourabichvili, Japaridze or Vashadze should return to the right path and lend their support to the country’s proper course.

“I do not know how a single person could follow them, and yet we see that 5,000 did, which is, in itself, regrettable. Nevertheless, they ought to be perfectly happy with all of this. The essential point is that this is a minority, and this aggressive minority will not, in the final analysis, achieve its aims. Were it otherwise, our country’s path of development would not be what it is; had such people prevailed, it would have been something altogether different.

Our chief concern is that every citizen who has today lost their way, who finds appeal in, for example, Gvaramia, Zourabichvili, Japaridze or Vashadze, should return to the right path and lend their support to the country’s proper course. That is our principal task. It follows, of course, that we must show respect towards the majority of those people, the majority of those 5,000 who were gathered there. They have been misled, but they too must return to the path bound up with the development of this country. That, accordingly, must be our approach,” Kobakhidze stated.