“Crushing brave, courageous people to cover one’s own cowardice is hardly a new tactic. Anyone who serves or attempts to undermine the organisers of October 4, or who tries to foist upon them the narrative that they “gave the regime additional grounds for repression”, is either a saboteur or a useful idiot serving the regime’s interests,” writes Ani Tsitlidze, member of the United National Movement party, on social media.

As Tsitlidze writes, “the regime needs no additional motivation for repression; it would have done the same thing anyway.”

“Bidzina Ivanishvili announced this back in April, and Kobakhidze repeated it several times thereafter. The October 4 call to action wasn’t illegitimate, so what are you complaining about? If the regime is ruling the country and has exceeded the constitutional framework, then it is not simply ‘storming’; it is the right of Georgian citizens to seize power themselves. Did any leader flee? Or go into hiding? Through their own self-sacrifice, they showed how one must fight and where the path to defeating the regime lies!

Why didn’t everyone come out together? What stopped us? That should be the subject of discussion, not whether defending a constitutional right was correct or whether the fence needed anything. My deepest respect to everyone who has been standing on Rustaveli for all these days, but I’m certain they understand perfectly well that we’re losing people every day, and we’ll lose even more if we can’t find a way forward together. We’ve been through this since 2012, and we know it exactly.

The only way forward is encapsulated in the spirit and slogan of October 4, but with better organisation, larger numbers, resilience, a thorough analysis of what was lacking for victory, and a continued fight until the regime collapses.

Another piece of slander is ‘we’ve catastrophically damaged relations with the international community’; you should know that those who say this are walking into meetings with international partners with precisely the same spirit and message that the Georgian Dream uses when talking about October 4, and they’re doing it deliberately. Let society judge their motivation. In a dictatorship, the struggle of free people for democracy and freedom deserves only support,” writes Ani Tsitlidze.