“The so-called process of artificial separation, suggesting that the United National Movement (UNM) is now attacking the Lelo party and Khazaradze, is nothing more than an incompetent, staged spectacle. No one will buy into it,” stated Guram Macharashvili, Executive Secretary of the People’s Power and a member of the temporary investigative commission of the parliament.

According to Macharashvili, Lelo and Gakharia for Georgia are essentially factions within the broader collective of the United National Movement.

“The five-month sessions of the investigative commission, during which Khazaradze and Japaridze’s names were repeatedly linked to the founding of TBC Bank under the UNM regime, have confirmed this. The bank was entangled in processes recounted by survivors of that regime—credit lines were opened in prisons by inmates, loans were taken out in favour of the state, and so on. Even when the United National Movement was ostensibly in opposition, at that time, Lelo was betraying its own country and was in alliance with them.

Now, this fabricated attempt to portray the United National Movement as attacking Lelo and Khazaradze is simply an inept spectacle. No one will believe it. This is merely another tactic from the UNM, which has overcome four electoral barriers. Based on available information, including international data, leadership roles within the party have been reallocated. The old UNM, known then as Mother UNM and Ahali, now includes Gakharia and Lelo, both pretending to have no connection to the original movement, trying to mislead the public into believing that the United National Movement is attacking Lelo, or that Gakharia for Georgia, who remains politically allied with the movement in city councils, has no ties. This is a deliberate attempt to deceive the public,” Macharashvili emphasised.