UNM’s Lasha Parulava: US legislative affairs are for the American people; Georgian Dream’s lecture on foreign agents and transparency is utter fraud

“Ongoing legislative processes in the United States are the affair of the American people,” stated Lasha Parulava, a member of the United National Movement (UNM).

Parulava was asked to comment on US federal legislation requiring individuals acting on behalf of foreign entities to register as foreign agents.

“As for our own domestic troubles: if anyone ever possessed an agent for a Prosecutor General, it was Georgian Dream. If anyone ever had a thief and a corrupt minister heading state security, it was Grigol Liluashvili. If anyone ever installed a thief as Prime Minister twice over, it is Georgian Dream, with Irakli Garibashvili now sitting in prison.

Yet Bidzina Ivanishvili, the man ultimately responsible for this entire system, remains comfortably in Abastumani, untouched by any authority daring enough to question him. Therefore, any rhetoric coming from Georgian Dream regarding foreign agent laws, transparency, or the systemic reforms our country actually needs is pure fraud,” Parulava declared.

Parulava further described the foreign influence legislation as a deliberate weapon designed to derail Georgia’s European integration trajectory.

“I repeat: when it comes to foreign agents, Georgian Dream appointed a Russian spy as General Prosecutor. For a political team with such a past and present to preach about the future, about reforms, transparency, the fight against corruption, or whether a law is Russian, foreign, or American, it is pure hypocrisy. Georgian Dream is the primary criminal political force, and it must be removed. When Georgian Dream invokes transparency as the primary rationale for this law, it is sheer cynicism.

In reality, the Russian law was the initial gambit to freeze Georgia’s European integration. Consequently, after the Georgian people defeated it in 2023, Ivanishvili re-introduced the legislation, effectively declaring: ‘We are locking the door opened by Brussels from the inside.’ That is the reality that has befallen this country, and Georgian Dream bears sole responsibility for it. Debating the text or motivation of this law is futile; listening to thieves lecture us on transparency is utterly laughable,” Parulava concluded.