The West underestimated the structure of Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party and the role of its founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, according to Michael Roth, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag.
Speaking to the media in Tbilisi on Thursday, Roth acknowledged missteps in assessing the party’s leadership and its alignment with democratic values.
“Our mistake was failing to understand that a party under the control of an oligarch could never meet our high democratic standards,” Roth admitted. He emphasized that the Georgian Dream initially appeared as a progressive force aligned with European social democratic ideals, but Ivanishvili’s dominance over the political landscape revealed a starkly different reality.
Roth recounted warnings from Georgian MPs during his visits: “They would tell me about the huge glass building on the hill and a man we would never meet. That man was Bidzina Ivanishvili, the most dominant and wealthy figure in Georgia.”
The German MP called this oversight a “self-criticism,” noting that the West gave Georgian Dream numerous opportunities to align with European values. “We believed in their potential, but their actions and Ivanishvili’s role have proven otherwise,” Roth concluded.
