“I can’t help but ask you, where do you stand and why? Why did you turn away from the will of the people, which you have so genuinely fulfilled before?” asked the President of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, during her speech at the plenary sitting of the spring session of Parliament.
According to the President, instead of strengthening the state institutions as the cornerstone of the country’s democracy, the one-party system and its influences are getting stronger.
“The ruling party unanimously called the European path our civilizational choice, so now I can’t help but ask you where you stand and why? Why did you turn away from the will of the people and the mandate received from them, which you have so genuinely fulfilled before? Today, you are a government that has slowly started to transform.
“Instead of strengthening the state institutions as the cornerstone of the country’s democracy, the one-party system and its influences are being strengthened. Laws passed in an accelerated mode (law on wiretapping, abolition of the state inspector’s service, changes in the rules of appointing judges and the law on foreign agents) which serves not to strengthen the country’s democracy or the well-being of citizens, but to strengthen and extend power,” the President said.
According to her, at the same time, judicial reform, which is necessary for the future of the country, has reached a dead end.
“Your government has not broken the vicious circle on which the same people have been spinning for years, which can also serve to consolidate power. People with different opinions and political tastes started to flow out of the Georgian Dream, and even a slightly different opinion is no longer heard in your ranks, because it automatically means leaving the mandate. The party’s influence on the Government and Parliament began to strengthen, the party turned into a decision-making space, the party chairman announces his position on all political issues in advance, and most importantly, the decision-making process became obscure, to say nothing of open discussion.
“You are a government which, with the incomprehensible steps taken in recent years, opposes the foreign goal of the country and the people’s mandate.
“In 2019, by bringing Gavrilov, you raised doubts and question marks about the country for the first time, although in reality the change in the government’s foreign course began in 2021, when Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili, then chairman of the Georgian Dream party, left Georgian politics, and here began a great confusion about who is responsible on this new course.
“The most visible example of this is insulting the highest head of the European Council and annulling a document drawn up with his involvement in such a way that no-one considered it necessary to even warn him. That same year, the EU loan was rejected. You never stop the anti-European rhetoric, blaming and insulting our partners. All this has reached the extent that we said farewell to the former EU ambassador with reprimands and accusations,” said the President of Georgia.
