Security services prevented radical plot to destabilise Georgia, ruling party senior MP

Georgia’s ruling party lawmaker and chair of parliament’s Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Committee, Maia Bitadze, has praised the country’s law enforcement and security agencies for what she described as “flawless work” in preventing an “attempted violent uprising” on 4 October.

“I am convinced that God protected us and that events did not unfold as the radicals intended,” Bitadze said. “Our State Security Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs worked together impeccably, neutralising and preventing every plan the radicals and their sponsors had prepared.”

Bitadze said that even if the situation had become more radicalised, the opposition would not have been able to organise a “Maidan-style” uprising, as Georgian society “is now far more politically aware than it was during the Rose Revolution in 2003 or the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2014.”

“Even if things had escalated further, they would not have been able to stage a Maidan in Georgia,” she said. “Our citizens today understand much more about the global geopolitical reality, as well as the forms of political pressure and promises that come from various international organisations and the EU, than they did years ago. Trust in these institutions and in international cooperation is no longer as solid as it was even three years ago.”

Bitadze also stressed that even citizens dissatisfied with the ruling Georgian Dream party did not want instability.
“People remember well what revolutions bring, no matter how peaceful they seem,” she said. “Our society has lived through these consequences - no one wants violence.”

She further accused the opposition of having “evolved from fascism into an attempt at terrorism,” arguing that their recent activities amounted to modern forms of political extremism.

“What we used to call an attempted coup d’état is now, in fact, a manifestation of modern terrorism,” Bitadze said in an interview with Post Analytica. “These pseudo-patriotic radicals tried to mobilise people with emotional slogans to overthrow the government by force, after repeatedly failing to win elections.”

She further claimed some opposition leaders deliberately risked imprisonment because they believed terrorist attacks were being planned in parallel.

“They went to extremes - this time not with six or seven months in mind, but facing up to nine years in prison,” she said. “None of them would have taken such a risk unless they were convinced that terrorist acts would actually occur. Their supporters were misled once again - just as they have been deceived for years, including through manipulation by opposition-aligned media.”