“The radical opposition’s collective force is a foreign agency and they operate under a single directive; it’s just that they get different assignments,” Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated on GPB First Channel’s programme “Topic of the Day”.
According to him, both Lelo and Gakharia’s parties are an integral part of the “collective” United National Movement agenda.
“As for Lelo and Gakharia, and why we consider them an integral part of the ‘collective United National Movement’ agenda, let’s take 2020-2021 and 2024, two major parliamentary elections and the 2021 elections, which were equivalent to parliamentary elections in terms of their significance. In all these cases, these political forces chose exactly the same agenda as the United National Movement and its second wing chose. Exactly the same, sabotage against their own country. Likewise, regarding candidate status, they were fully engaged in sabotage to the very end. This was the shared agenda guiding these political forces, including acts of sabotage, which form one of the main pillars of our lawsuit. Our claim regarding the unconstitutionality of certain parties is based on this premise.
Gakharia was the only one who distanced himself from the October 4 plan; Lelo did not. Lelo said they would go to the polls until 8 p.m., and would join the coup rally after the polls closed. In the end, they too distanced themselves after their plan collapsed, just as Sopho Japaridze and Salome Zourabichvili distanced themselves. The only one, Gakharia’s party, distanced itself, but throughout all these years, it never distanced itself from constant sabotage against our country and state institutions. Moreover, Gakharia’s party had formed a coalition with the United National Movement for four years in several municipalities. They followed their agenda. When you form a coalition with a party that is essentially unconstitutional, this unmistakably indicates your unconstitutionality as well. Based on this, I think everything is clear, though we must await the Constitutional Court’s decision,” the Prime Minister stated.
Asked about possible cooperation with Gakharia and Lelo, the Prime Minister wondered what cooperation could be discussed “when they have directly, on external orders, declared hostility against a legitimate government that has been supported by more than 1.1 million Georgian voters twice in succession?”
According to the Head of Government’s assessment, they have been tasked with refusing to recognise the government’s legitimacy, neither domestically nor in foreign policy terms, and under such circumstances, cooperation is pointless.
“Under no circumstances must they recognise the democratic nature of elections. Parliamentary elections are primarily the focus, with local government being of lesser relevance in this context, and they continue to pursue this agenda. To this day, they refuse to recognise the legitimacy of our country’s domestic political process. Gakharia’s party considers the boycott a mistake, but they have yet to acknowledge that the elections were democratic. They only state that they did not receive more votes than those recorded in the CEC data, but they do not recognise the legitimacy of the CEC itself, because, ultimately, that is their assignment.
As for foreign policy legitimacy, to this day, these people declare that this country has a Russian government, which means that in circumstances where 20% of the country is occupied by the Russian Federation, declaring the government to be a Russian government means refusing to recognise its legitimacy in foreign policy terms. Under these circumstances, what cooperation can we speak of when they have directly, on external orders, declared hostility against a legitimate government that has been supported by more than 1.1 million Georgian voters twice in succession? When you don’t recognise this, how can cooperation be established?
They won’t be able to either, because they have other directives. Their assignment is to continue the sabotage as far as they can. Under such circumstances, of course, there’s no point. We have a great interest in having a healthy opponent. On corruption alone, we need assistance. If only someone would bring us concrete facts about matters under suspicion. Nothing of the sort, they’re not interested in this at all. Perhaps something is being done incorrectly or poorly, if only someone would bring us something, if only someone would bring me personally such a thing, which would make subsequent intervention easier,” Irakli Kobakhidze stated.
