Politicians from the nine-party opposition bloc and the Labor Party exchanged sharp barbs in televised debates on May 12 calling each other “liar” and “demagogue.”
Koba Davitashvili, leader of the Party of People – part of the nine-party bloc, and Giorgi Gugava of the Labor Party accused each other of cooperating with the ruling party in the late-night political talk show, Primetime, aired by Rustavi 2 TV on May 12.
“Getting rid of Saakashvili is not your [bloc’s] goal. You feel well under his rule,” Gugava told Davitashvili and added that the bloc decided to stop street protest rallies in January because its leaders “made a deal with Saakashvili.” Davitashvili responded: “Shame on you for saying that.”
“In Gldani you are working for the National Movement,” Davitashvili continued. Gugava is the Labor Party’s majoritarian MP candidate in the Tbilisi’s Gldani single-mandate constituency competing for the seat with six other candidates including with MP Kakha Kukava of the Conservative Party, part of the nine-party bloc. “Your major goal there is to take votes from Kakha Kukava,” Davitashvili told Gugava.
The Labor Party has for several times already attacked the nine-party bloc. The nine-party bloc has so far refrained from engaging in public spat with other opposition groups saying that their major goal ahead of polls was to debate and compete with the ruling party and not with the opposition groups.
Another recent case of sharp exchange of barbs between the two opposition groups involved politicians from the Republican Party and newly set up Christian-Democratic Party. MP Levan Berdzenishvili of the Republican Party slammed the Christian-Democratic Party leader Giorgi Targamadze for saying that NATO-membership “should not be a goal in itself for Georgia.” In an interview published in the Georgian weekly Kviris Palitra last week Berdzenishvili also slammed the Christian-Democratic Party for, as he put it, taking “Hitler’s flag” as a symbol of the party and modifying it “by replacing Swastika with the cross.” In televised remarks Zviad Vepkhvadze of the Christian-Democratic Party said Berdzenishvili had “psychiatric problems.”
