“In their very essence, we are dealing with anti-constitutional parties. That is precisely why we have applied to the Constitutional Court to have this established,” declared the Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, Shalva Papuashvili.

Papuashvili stated that “without exception, every single member of the Opposition Alliance is betraying the motherland.”

“When parties have dropped constitutional principles and degenerated into extra-systemic groupings, everything of this sort follows naturally. Proceedings are under way at the Constitutional Court so that all of this may be brought within the legal and political framework established by our Constitution. This chaos will persist for as long as we fail to accept that there exist parties in Georgia that are enemies of the Constitution. The primary entity that every last member of the so-called Alliance is betraying is Georgia itself. When you betray your motherland, the question of whether you then betray one another or squabble amongst yourselves becomes a matter of the seventeenth-order importance. The core problem of the ‘UNM Alliance’ is that they are betraying their own country,” said Papuashvili.

Papuashvili further noted that the opposition is fighting not for the sympathy and votes of the Georgian people, but for the sympathy, votes, and money of foreigners.

“They are not fighting to win the sympathy and votes of the Georgian people; they are fighting to win the sympathy, votes, and money of foreign actors. This is a small country, and nothing stays hidden for long. We know perfectly well how representatives of the radical opposition grovel and plead at various meetings, at embassies, in encounters with foreign officials, begging for funding from various countries. This is a struggle for foreign financing. They are openly putting Georgia up for sale, and we know exactly what terms they are offering, which country and which interest group will receive what, should they come to power.

What we are witnessing is the selling off of this country in plain sight, broadcast live. Every time a foreign country’s flag is waved, there is a price attached, a payment rendered. Every banner of a foreign politician held aloft, every chorus of praise for a foreign government, each of these earns them their reward. This is a fight for foreign money. Foreign countries that had grown accustomed to spending money covertly on Georgian politics now find those avenues curtailed, both through legislation and through the actions of the State Security Service. That is precisely why there is a united front against Georgia: on the one hand, threats from the European Union that these laws be reversed so that they may once again finance politics in the shadows; and on the other, the processes unfolding from within the country,” said Papuashvili.