The political council of Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, expressed grave concerns on Thursday regarding the potential imposition of sanctions against Bidzina Ivanishvili. The party warned that such actions would represent a “tragic shift” for Great Britain and would diminish the country’s stature, equating it with Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, and the European Parliament.
The statement from the council reads: “If sanctions are imposed against Bidzina Ivanishvili, it will be clearly demonstrated that the ‘deep state’ has reduced Great Britain to the level of Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, and the European Parliament, which should be considered an exceptionally tragic event.”
The Georgian Dream council further raised alarm over the move to sanction Ivanishvili, which followed a motion from 14 MPs in the British House of Commons. The UK had already sanctioned several high-ranking Georgian officials, including Vakhtang Gomelauri, Georgian Dream’s Interior Minister and Vice PM.
GD noted that Great Britain has long been a beacon of the rule of law and human rights. “Georgian society is well aware that historically, Great Britain has always stood out as a strong, sovereign and progressive state, where the idea of the rule of law and fundamental human rights developed,” the statement reads. “It was in England that fundamental procedural rights arose, and specifically, the right to a fair trial, according to which, before imposing a sanction on a person, he must be provided with a proper hearing and the sanction must be supported by irrefutable evidence.”
The statement also criticized the actions of countries like Ukraine, Lithuania, and Estonia, which had previously sanctioned Georgian officials without clear evidence. “We all remember the unjust and shameful… resolutions by which the European Parliament demanded the punishment of Bidzina Ivanishvili and the release of criminals,” the statement declared. It cautioned that these baseless sanctions present a troubling trend.
The Georgian Dream council further argued that sanctions against Ivanishvili are unwarranted, given his significant contributions to Georgia’s democratic transition. “Today, without any basis, the leader of the ruling party of Georgia is being threatened with sanctions, who freed Georgia from authoritarian rule, brought a democratic transition to the country, ended the systematic practice of murder and torture, business racketeering, media hijacking and election fraud in Georgia, maintained 12 years of uninterrupted peace in the country and tripled the economy.”
In closing, the statement warned that imposing sanctions would irreparably damage the UK’s moral standing. “If sanctions are imposed, the authority of the UK as a state based on the rule of law and fundamental human rights will finally be a thing of the past,” it concluded. “However, given that the ‘deep state,’ or the global war party, has doomed numerous states to physical destruction, the moral destruction and decline of Great Britain is a much less tragic event.”
