Adjara Supreme Council chair says opposition protests are “externally driven”

Tsotne Ananidze, chairman of the Supreme Council of Georgia’s Adjara region, has criticised the country’s opposition and ongoing anti-government protests, describing them as lacking substance and being directed from abroad.

In a post on social media, Ananidze said the so-called “continuous protest” had become the opposition’s “only lifeline” and claimed that it was as artificial and externally driven as the opposition itself.

“The Georgian opposition’s only lifeline is the so-called continuous protest, which everyone has grown tired of and which is just as meaningless and externally driven as the so-called Georgian opposition,” Ananidze wrote.

He added that, in his view, movements that lack a clear form, substance or objective ultimately fail, arguing that this had contributed to the opposition’s current political position.