President Salome Zurabishvili and Foreign Minister Ilia Darchiashvili will take part in the Munich Security Conference from Georgia.
“The president has received an official invitation from the international conference in Munich and intends to participate,” the Georgian president’s administration said, although they did not answer the question as to whether Salome Zurabishvili has the government’s permission to visit.
Georgian Dream says that in attending, Salome Zurabishvili is violating the constitution once again.
“Once again, she violates the constitution and stirs up radicalism. At the same time, there is a campaign asking why the Prime Minister is not going to the Munich Conference – because his political statement was that his first visit would be to Brussels, the capital of Europe. Various representatives from different countries take part in such conferences, including the Munich Conference, and there will be many foreign ministers, as well as the Georgian foreign minister,” said GD MP Mamuka Mdinaradze.
Past prime ministers Irakli Garibashvili, Giorgi Gakharia, and Mamuka Bakhtadze participated in the Munich Security Conference. This year, the representative from the government will be the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
The 60th anniversary Munich Security Conference is being held on February 16-18.
Ahead of this year’s event, the Munich Security Report 2024 was published. The Eastern Europe chapter of the document, whose authors are Nicole Koenig and Leonard Schutte, talks about the challenges of democracy in Georgia. The report says while Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are trying to integrate with the West, “Belarus remains Russia’s only ally in Eastern Europe.”
“Russia may not have been able to bring Georgia, Moldova and the Western Balkans into its camp, but it is still trying to prevent their Western integration. Pro-Russian oligarch and founder of Georgia’s ruling party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is responsible for the country’s recent democratic backsliding and distancing from the European Union against the wishes of the majority of Georgian society,” the report says.
