Shalva Papuashvili calls David Kramer's statement 'direct attack' on government elected by Georgian people
By Liza Mchedlidze
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia Shalva Papuashvili responded to the statement of the former US Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer, according to which sanctions should start with Bidzina Ivanishvili and sanctions should be imposed on those who follow Ivanishvili's orders. Papuashvili called the statement "a direct attack on the government elected by the Georgian people."
According to Shalva Papuashvili, the term "Oligarchy" rising in Georgian reality, was ultimately aimed at "attacking the Georgian government".
"He who attacks the government elected by the people of Georgia cannot be a friend of the Georgian people, this is an axiom, therefore, this is how we should look at the whole situation. To observe how the term 'oligarchy' originated in Georgian reality, how it developed, what interest was behind it, to make a certain "cliché" of this or that person. All this was ultimately aimed at launching an attack on the Georgian government," said Papuashvili.
When asked whose interests may be behind the attempt to weaken the Georgian government, Shalva Papuashvili responded with "the radical part of the opposition and their supporters inside the country or outside".
"This is a common policy, which we can see even now, that in fact, the radical part of the opposition and their supporters inside and outside the country are holding the European future of Georgia hostage, and they are trying to trade for the weakening of the Georgian government.
This is the desire to replace the government elected by the people, which is worse around, to somehow bypass democracy. We remember how the situation was after the elections. When they don't get the mandate, they can't get the people's support, but they try to bypass the elections to get power, and that's why they want to weaken the government elected by the Georgian people and bring in the government that the people of Georgia have already rejected nine times. Because of the authoritarian regime they established, these are the real reasons.
Be it oligarchy, state capture, or other terms, these groups brought them to Georgia in order to discredit the country and influence the change of government in an undemocratic way," said Shalva Papuashvili.