Opposition leader Vashadze calls on parliament chair to distance himself from anti-Western rhetoric

Giorgi Vashadze, chair of Strategy Agmashenebeli opposition party, called on Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Monday “to distance himself” from the anti-Western campaign “coming from the oligarch,” referring to  the recent statements by three former MPs of the ruling party.

Vashadze, like other opposition members, believe that the former MPs of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, Mikheil Kavelashvili, Sozar Subari and Dimitri Khundadze, who recently left the party “to tell the public the truth,” were actually serving “Russian interests” and were instructed by the founder of the GD Bidzina Ivanishvili.

He said that if Papuashvili refused to do so and began the “justification” of the anti-Western statements, it would portray him as a “bolt” of the “oligarchic regime acting against the national interests.”

Vashadze said that he had no plans to join the meetings with the opposition initiated by Papuashvili “to ease polarization” in the country, noting that the move was “artificial, with no healthy intentions.”

In his letter released last week, Kavelashvili accused US Ambassador Kelly Degnan of supporting the forces who “wish to drag Georgia into Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

He suggested that Degnan “degraded the US reputation in Georgia more than the Russian solf force would have done that.”

Degnan responded that she was unable to read the letter to the end as it was “full of disinformation and conspiracy.”