Georgian Dream is organizing a “General public gathering” on Rustaveli Avenue tonight.
According to Mamuka Mdinaradze, executive secretary of Georgian Dream, the meeting will start at 18:00 and speeches are planned at the meeting from 20:00.
Rustaveli Avenue has been shut to all transport- private and public – since morning, as screens, stage and sound systems are set up.
In a method employed by this and former governments, civil servant “supporters” are being bussed in from around the country to rally alongside those who truly believe the foreign agents bill and anti-LGBTQ restrictions should be passed into law.
Many say, and GT has heard it from teachers themselves, that they have been “strongly advised” to attend for fear of their jobs. There are some 100,000 civil servants throughout Georgia.
“The whole country knows that they are bringing people by force, they are blackmailing people, they will fire them from their jobs, and they are planning thousands of misfortunes,” opposition MP Giorgi Vashadze noted. “The whole country knows this and how can this story be hidden?”
“Mr. Bidzina will definitely be at the rally, it is his wish and he will attend the rally,” Mamuka Mdinaradze said last Tuesday. “It will be a very big rally and I urge everyone to respect each and every participant of that rally. Thousands of people write to us in private correspondence that people want to hold a rally and show how many we are and what we can do.“
Those who packed into Rustaveli Avenue last night and over the past two weeks to protest the “Russian law” have been invited to voice their protest at a parallel rally in Vake Park tonight at 7pm.
