Ex-TV Anchor-Turned-Politician Hopeful over his Party’s Success
Giorgi Targamadze, leader of newly set up Christian-Democratic Party, said his party would garner much more than just 5% – a threshold necessary to clear to endorse MP candidates in the new parliament.
“Our minimum goal when we launched was to clear the [5%] threshold; but now we can say that we will receive much higher support than 5% and it is confirmed by various public opinion surveys, conducted including by international organizations, as well as other opposition parties,” Giorgi Targamadze said in the late-night talk show, Primetime, aired by Rustavi 2 TV on May 19.
When asked whether his party would join the planned rally by the nine-party opposition bloc after the polls, Targamadze responded: “If there is mass ballot fraud that influences overall election results, we will stand beside the Georgian people.”
He, however, stressed that it was “inadmissible to speak about rebellion in advance” – reference to the nine-party opposition bloc’s warning to stage “people’s rebellion” in case of ballot fraud.
“We think it is inadmissible to speak about rebellion in advance, because such [a rhetoric] decreases level of public confidence towards the electoral process in general,” Targamadze said.
He also said that widespread rumors as if the Christian-Democratic Party was financed by the authorities, in particular by Interior Minister, Vano Merabishvili, were “a slander.”
Giorgi Targamadze, ex-anchor and former head of political programs of the Imedi TV station, establish the Christian-Democratic Party in February. It was a political comeback for him. Targamadze chaired the parliamentary faction of ex-Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze’s Revival Union party until March 2003, when he resigned from Parliament and politics altogether.
