Giant disinformation campaign from West not North on Saakashvili harmed Georgia’s image – parliament speaker

A giant disinformation campaign that came, ironically, from the West not the North as expected on Georgia’s currently imprisoned former president Mikheil Saaakshvili, had harmed the country’s reputation worldwide, Shalva Papuashvili, the parliament speaker, said in his social media post on Thursday, claiming  “putting perceptions before facts” had made the West “victim” of the former official’s “fake campaign” on his health. 

 

Papuashvili alleged Saakashvili’s announcement last week on his engagement in politics, which came following the European Court of Human Rights rejection in May on his transfer abroad on health grounds, had revealed the former president had been engaged in “fake, harmful, anti-state campaign” and his allegations on “torture and ill-treatement” while in custody were “unfounded and staged”. 

 

He said the “disinformation, cooked up in back and forth between domestic and foreign actors”, had kept the country in an “agitated state”, in times when Georgia had much more important problems to solve, both geopolitically as well as with respect to the EU integration.

 

“Foreign politicians, who repeated and shared this disinformation, knowingly or not, contributed to a malevolent campaign against Georgia. I believe some of these politicians, especially in the European Parliament, owe an apology to the Georgian people”, Papuashvili said. 

 

He stressed the developments since Saakashvili’s arrest in 2021 had demonstrated “first, there is virtually no boundary to Georgia’s radical opposition’s lies. And second, more important, our foreign partners are perfectly capable of succumbing to false perceptions, thus undermining the trust in our relations”.