Kobakhidze Doubles Down on the Narrative of Retribution
Following the local elections and the night of localized unrest instigated by some protest leaders, PM Irakli Kobakhidze doubled down on the narrative of retribution against protesters and their political opponents.
Speaking at a special press conference, Kobakhdize proclaimed that “all who came at 16:00 at the Liberty Square, all of them went to the event of the coup, and only after seeing that the attempt failed, they shamefully distanced themselves from Burchuladze, Zodelava, and others.”
Predictably, he tied yesterday’s events to the habitual narrative promoted by the Georgian Dream, which considers all previous protest movements as attempted coups by the United National Movement (UNM) and its affiliated parties.
“In the past four years, we saw already the fifth attempt at organizing “NatsMaidan” ‘[linking the pejorative term Natsis for UNM and Maidan, for Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity],” Kobakhidze argued and continued that “we have a specific responsibility towards one million one hundred thousand voters [who voted for GD according to CEC data] to rid our country of the disease named the collective National Movement.”
The statement dovetails with the intended move to ban UNM and affiliated movements through the Constitutional Court, based on the Tsulukiani Commission report. The October 4 unrest is likely to fold neatly into the news cycle and create a launching pad for this event.
Going further, Kobakhidze specified that “Under collective National Movement, I mean the relevant political parties, all foreign agents that are giving our state no respite, the extremist groups that work under instructions of the foreign special services and with their financing, among others, one of the universities captired by Saakashvili family and the organizations “Fari”, “Ertoba” and other extremist groups.”
The GD-affiliated TV channels have been preparing the ground for targeting the universities and coordination movements linked with the peaceful protests, accusing them of “money laundering” and acting on behalf of the “foreign intelligence services […] to violently change the government.”
Kobakhidze also slammed the two larger opposition parties that took part in the elections – Lelo and Gakharia’s For Georgia, saying the “plan prepared by the Deep State to substitute the UNM with Lelo and Gakharia has failed” and those parties are “good for being scrapped” after the election defeat.