Lelo’s Irakli Kupradze: Georgia’s future is under mortal threat; Georgian Dream’s demographic and educational crisis is a war on our people

“We warn everyone that Georgia’s future is under mortal threat. Over 180 public schools failed to enrol a single first-grader this year, while nearly 730 schools registered five or fewer. This represents a campaign of genocide waged against Georgia and its people by Georgian Dream,” declared Irakli Kupradze, Secretary General of Lelo – Strong Georgia, during a press briefing.

Kupradze asserted that while Lelo stands ready to defend the public interest, active public support remains vital and decisive in overcoming the crisis.

“As we speak, 55 toddlers from 20 public kindergartens in Tbilisi have been hospitalised with acute food poisoning. This falls squarely on Georgian Dream and Kakha Kaladze, whose corrupt governance puts our children’s health at risk. The Ivanishvili regime remains completely indifferent to the next generation—a reality made clear as the new school year opened amidst a severe educational crisis that left tens of thousands of pupils unable to return to their own classrooms.

According to official metrics, 131 schools urgently require structural rehabilitation, yet tenders have not even been announced for 60 of them. In Tbilisi alone, 38 out of 284 public schools failed to ring the first bell this September. Over 20,000 students remain relocated to alternative facilities, with emergency transportation costs alone consuming more than 50 million GEL. This is no longer simply an infrastructural defect; it is the collapse of our education system born of state irresponsibility.

Furthermore, children are arriving at school hungry. A joint study by UNICEF and GeoStat revealed that 35 per cent of pupils never eat during school hours. Georgian Dream broke its repeated pledges and refused to roll out a free school meal programme; a policy we have championed for years. Childhood hunger directly causes health complications and severely impairs academic performance. Implementing free school meals is a cornerstone priority for Strong Georgia – Lelo, and we will execute this programme nationwide just as we successfully proved possible in Tsalenjikha. It is by no means an impossible task; it requires political will, something Ivanishvili’s corrupt regime entirely lacks.

Providing free school meals for pupils in grades 1 through 4 would cost the state budget a modest 147 million GEL. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of GEL are squandered across state-owned enterprises, energy companies, bloated bureaucracy, and non-competitive public procurement. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze himself admitted that 700 million GEL is being squandered across state enterprises. The funds are there—what is missing is the political will to channel those resources into feeding, educating, and protecting our children. The direct fallout of this neglect is a school system seeing fewer and fewer children enter its doors each year.

Nationwide, 188 public schools failed to admit a single first-grade pupil this term, while 727 public schools enrolled five or fewer. These figures depict a devastating demographic reality. Fewer children are being born into Georgian families as households buckle under severe social hardship, poverty, and existential uncertainty. This is the grim reality Georgian Dream has crafted for our children and us.

That is to say nothing of the acute deficit of special education teachers. The rights of children with special educational needs remain confined to paper. With only one special educator for every six students requiring support, coverage is wholly inadequate, yet the state takes no steps toward a genuine resolution. Inclusive education must not remain a mere buzzword in policy documents; the state must guarantee equal access to quality education for all 14,000 special-needs pupils across public schools.

Finally, and most critically: the regime’s greatest act of malice and hostility toward its own people lies in the theft and falsification of Georgian history. They have rewritten historical facts through propaganda, erasing two centuries of Russian aggression.This goes far beyond education policy: when a government teaches children a distorted history, it seeks to rob a nation of its memory, its heritage, and its future. We must remain vigilant, as this policy directly targets our national interests. Acquiescing to this would be our greatest error and a betrayal of future generations. Our children’s education, health, rights, and heritage must never be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

We warn the public that Georgia’s future is endangered: its identity, history, infrastructure, and demography. When nearly 1,000 schools, roughly 30 per cent of all public institutions, enrol either zero or fewer than five first-graders, it constitutes a demographic genocide declared by Georgian Dream against the Georgian nation. We will remain in this fight to defend the interests of the Georgian people to the end, but public solidarity remains essential and decisive,” Kupradze declared.