Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said Georgia had faced five attempted revolutions over the past four years, describing them as acts of “political terror” allegedly directed by a foreign agency. He also claimed that former US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan’s criticism of the foreign agents law was itself “an act of political terror.”
Speaking on Imedi LIVE, Kobakhidze said four of the five alleged revolution attempts had been violent and accused what he described as foreign-controlled political actors of seeking to destabilize the country.
“When you have five attempts at revolution in a country in four years, four of which are violent, this is nothing but political terror. Agents were constantly engaged in this, whom we once called the opposition, although we can never call them the opposition. This is an ordinary foreign agency whose only task is to keep the population of Georgia under constant political terror,” Kobakhidze said.
The prime minister argued that the government had introduced a number of measures to counter what he described as political terror, including the law on transparency of foreign influence, amendments to legislation on assemblies and demonstrations, stricter administrative regulations and measures aimed at curbing hate speech.
Kobakhidze claimed that the transparency law was specifically designed to prevent political terror.
Referring to criticism voiced by former US Ambassador Kelly Degnan when the legislation was adopted, Kobakhidze said her description of the law as “a black day for Georgian democracy” amounted to political terror.
“You remember that when we were adopting the transparency law, the representative of the previous US administration, the then ambassador, declared it was ‘a black day for Georgian democracy.’ ‘Super Tuesday’ and ‘a black day for democracy’ are the same farce. This was also an act of political terror,” he said.
Kobakhidze further claimed that Degnan’s remarks misled the Georgian public and artificially fueled revolutionary processes in the country.
