Lelo’s Tazo Datunashvili: Papuashvili knew full well he wouldn’t get a single high-level meeting in Brussels; they go to Italy at the invitation of local fascists to posture

“The overwhelming majority of Georgian citizens remain firmly in favour of EU integration,” Tazo Datunashvili from the opposition Strong Georgia-Lelo told TV Pirveli.

Datunashvili commented on recent European trips by government leaders, including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s attendance at an EU expansion summit in Brussels organised by Euronews, as well as Speaker of Parliament Shalva Papuashvili’s visits to Belgium and Italy.

“Everyone must watch the Euronews summit in English to see what happens to Irakli Kobakhidze when he is confronted with reality. Stripped of state propaganda, he is completely vulnerable. He was speaking from the summit stage not to his own voters, but directly to Bidzina Ivanishvili. Look at the polling: across every survey measuring public support for EU accession in Georgia, there has been at most a minor two-to-three per cent fluctuation. Around 75 per cent of our population supports joining the European Union. That includes a clear majority of Georgian Dream’s own electorate,” Datunashvili said.

He added: “When Kobakhidze claims the EU is in economic decline, that it is run by bureaucracy and a ‘global war party,’ and that they hope everything improves before Georgia joins, even Georgian Dream voters do not buy this. But Bidzina Ivanishvili believes it, and this entire rhetoric is performed exclusively for an audience of one.”

Asked whether this forms part of a deliberate, step-by-step strategy by Ivanishvili to prompt the European Union into rejecting Georgia outright, Datunashvili responded:

“Papuashvili knew full well that when he arrived in Brussels, he wouldn’t secure a single high-level meeting, and that he would only be received at the Belgian parliament on the invitation of a single political faction. Or take their visits to the Italian parliament, where they accept invitations from local fascists only to strike poses. The regime’s sole unresolved obstacle to maintaining power is that the overwhelming majority of Georgian citizens, including most Georgian Dream supporters, are pro-European. They want Georgia’s future in the EU. The government has failed to sell the public on the ‘decline of Europe’ or ‘European moral decay.’ The public simply isn’t buying it.”