Kakha Kaladze: 22 parties banned in Ukraine, eight in Moldova and some 150 in Europe, so why the outcry over Georgia?

“Political parties must not and cannot carry out the instructions of outside forces against the country,” Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze told the media, commenting on the Constitutional Court proceeding.

He said that since 2012, Georgian politics has no longer been run from abroad.

“It can’t be the way it was years ago, when Georgian politics was run from outside. That changed after 2012. It took some time. Step by step, we did everything so that today the Georgian state is completely free. Georgian Government makes decisions on the instructions of the Georgian people. The true master of this country is His Excellency, the Georgian people. Representatives of particular political parties can present counter-arguments at the Constitutional Court hearings, rather than the political statements they are making,” Kaladze said.

The mayor noted that political parties involved in criminal activity have also been banned in several European countries over the past decade.

“What is criminal are the specific cases and actions these political forces and politicians carried out for years on the instructions of outside forces. They took foreign funding and came out openly and talked about all of this. They lobbied aggressively across foreign offices to prevent the country from securing candidate status and signing the Association Agreement. When it comes to banning parties, look at Ukraine: twenty-two political parties have been banned there over the last three years alone. In Moldova, eight parties have been banned in the last three years, and in Europe around 150 parties have been banned over recent decades,” Kaladze said.