Papuashvili: Patriarch baptised three times as many people in Upper Adjara as attended the opposition rally in Tbilisi

“Yesterday I was in Upper Adjara, where the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia baptised local people, children and adults alike. The Patriarch baptised three times as many people as attended the rally. That too shows where the Georgian people stand,” Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, told journalists.

Papuashvili said the people do not side with foreign agents and cannot side with those who say Georgia should bow and scrape to foreign governments.

“The Georgian people cannot stand with that pseudo-religious sect which is trying to push the Georgian Church out of public life and to bring to power a force that would be directly subordinate to the influence of foreign governments. In short, it is an anti-patriotic, foreign-agent force. Yesterday was the perfect case in point. In Tbilisi, we saw a few dozen members of a pseudo-religious sect gathered to perform their pseudo-religious ritual once again, and in Upper Adjara, we saw three times as many people gathered in true faith. The people do not side with foreign agents. The people cannot side with those who say Georgia should bow and scrape to foreign governments and serve foreign interests. The people cannot side with a sect that attacks the Georgian Church and sacrifices Georgia’s interests to those of any other country,” Papuashvili said.

The Speaker said yesterday’s rally was a rally of the collective United National Movement.

“Let nobody fool themselves into thinking they have some internal conflict, or that they like or dislike each other. They are allied in various configurations. Now Saakashvili is supposedly being attacked by people who were the chief ideologues and enforcers of his government and its criminal activities: Bokeria, Gvaramia and others. They were the ideologues and enforcers of the dictatorship. What we are watching today is simply a game, and we have been watching this game for 14 years. They supposedly split up, then come back together, abuse each other, then invite each other to take senior party posts. How many more times must we witness this, as they attempt to create the illusion of a rift between them? This is the collective UNM, and over these days we are watching the trial of the collective UNM,” Papuashvili said.