“Half of the opposition parties are currently seriously considering participating in local elections,” stated Nika Melia, one of the Coalition for Change leaders.

Melia does not specify which parties these are.

“We are doing everything we can, myself included, to prevent this from happening, because I think we all experienced and saw very clearly in April the price of the parliamentary boycott and, in a positive sense, what an advantage the Georgian people now have in this unequal struggle. If there hadn’t been a parliamentary boycott, not a single person would be standing up in protest—no one would have protested at all until now. At most, someone might have protested for a week if opposition parties hadn’t resorted to a boycott.

We should take the experience of 2020-21 as a lesson, and yes, I have no doubt that if the parliamentary boycott hadn’t been broken then, that unimaginable precedent in local elections when they came up with the 43 per cent threshold and persuaded parties to agree to it, would not have occurred, and new parliamentary elections would have been held in this country,” Nika Melia stated during a broadcast on TV Pirveli.

Furthermore, Melia explained that many in the opposition have not answered the question of whether they will participate in local elections if nothing changes.

“No matter how much I respect any fellow politician, I cannot fully trust them until I get an answer to my question: if nothing changes, are we participating in local elections or not? When you ask this question and there is no answer, yes, it makes me think that many are considering it. Otherwise, what’s preventing them from answering this question?” Melia noted.