Speaker: Gakharia’s party member refuses mandate after receiving just 369 votes; does her presence matter?

“Rusudan Tevzadze, a member of Giorgi Gakharia’s party, today declared that she would refuse her parliamentary mandate. She ran as a single-mandate candidate in one of Tbilisi’s districts on October 4, which had 67,000 voters, yet she garnered just 369 votes. How meaningful is her presence in this context? You can draw your own conclusions,” said the Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia, Shalva Papuashvili.

Shalva Papuashvili added that these 369 votes out of 67,000 voters are what some are using to talk about legitimacy.

“I understand their situation. It was the same in the previous parliament; remember Melia’s statement, the one who entered the parliament would be a ‘pouffe’, and then they entered as ‘pouffs’. They also had no intention of actively working in parliament; they didn’t relinquish their mandates, but they also didn’t set foot in the parliament. Now, they are faced with recognising the parliamentary elections and are struggling to find any justification.

However, they found themselves in a more awkward position. The defeated opposition, along with the defeated ambassadors, refused to admit their defeat and instead began working on Plan B: to forcibly remove the legitimate and democratically elected government and hand it over to external puppets. This plan ultimately failed and collapsed on October 4. Here, I would also like to recall MEP Rasa Juknevičienė, who was posting on social media at the very moment when the presidential palace was being stormed.

Now, they must justify to their own voters the shameful behaviour of not working in parliament over the past year. In this regard, the only interesting aspect is that we can clearly see what tasks are being orchestrated from outside. Among these is a party that is officially managed from abroad by Mr Gakharia, who is in Germany and, like Lenin, appears to be attempting to organise revolutions here from Germany,” said Papuashvili.

Rusudan Tevzadze has announced her resignation from her parliamentary mandate and her departure from the Gakharia for Georgia party.