Gigi Tsereteli, one of the leaders of European Georgia, stated that under the current situation and with the existing structure, participating in local self-government elections would bring no benefits.
Speaking on Palitra News’s program Free Studio, he said that European Georgia’s position is that new elections must be held.
“Right now, it’s a time when the pro-Western opposition and the part of society currently protesting are thinking about change—how to defuse the difficult situation. The government, on the other hand, thinks everything is fine, that there’s no crisis. But we see what’s actually happening: people are in the streets every day, isolation is deepening, and repressive mechanisms are being intensified.
What matters are changes—without them, what kind of elections are we even talking about? In these conditions and with this structure, I do not belong to the group that believes elections would do any good. When the government holds all the tools and has the appetite to use them excessively without changing anything, European Georgia does not believe that participating in elections will result in anything other than even worse consequences. If the government has every instrument at its disposal, then there's no point in taking part in these elections. We’re talking about new elections—new national elections.
The purpose of our unity and coordination is to achieve fundamental change and to finally put an end to the current situation that our society is making huge sacrifices to overcome.”
Regarding the question about the "Resistance Platform" and today’s meeting—specifically whether the issue of Gakharia for Georgia leaving the platform was discussed—Tsereteli said that coordination does not mean full agreement on everything.
He also emphasized that all parties involved in the platform take coordination seriously.
“Creating such a platform is a positive development, especially if we genuinely want political synergy. Salome Zourabichvili deserves credit for making a strong effort to facilitate coordination. I don’t think anyone involved wants to sabotage this process. That’s not the case. The fact [that Giorgi Gakharia appeared before the parliamentary investigative commission] seemed to break the shared agreement, but it turned out it wasn’t entirely agreed upon in their view. Gakharia has his own arguments, which I won’t discuss, because I don’t want to dramatize it.
No one is punishing anyone, but there are certain rules. Coordination doesn’t mean agreeing on everything, but it does mean that if I disagree with something, the others should know about it. This isn’t a game—it’s a serious moment in our country’s history. That’s why everyone takes coordination seriously, and many past issues have been set aside for this cause,” Tsereteli said.
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