Dissident GD Members Announce New Public Movement

Ruling Georgian Dream party MP Guram Macharashvili decided to leave the party today before he joined his fellow departed trio of MPs Sozar Subari, Dimitri Khundadze, and Mikheil Kavelashvili, alongside other local council GD departees to announce that they have founded a public movement. MP Subari said the movement will “fight for answers to many public policy questions which often have not been answered before, [and will] do everything to prevent Georgia from facing the danger of war, and ensure that Georgia’s European path and integration is irreversible.”

MP Subari cited GD founder and ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili’s July 27 letter and U.S. Ambassador Kelly Degnan’s response as the reasons for the decision. Ivanishvili’s letter repeated claims of Georgia being dragged into the war with Ukraine and also addressed rumors started by MP Kavelashvili, and picked up by his fellow departees MPs Subari and Khundadze, of a possible meeting between Amb. Degnan and their insinuation of the U.S. Ambassador trying to blackmail Ivanishvili into war.

“It’s true that the threat of war has slowed today but it has not been entirely avoided, when the threat exists and when in our region such an intense battle is being fought, the largest in Europe since the second world war, of course, the threat of war and Georgia becoming involved exists,” MP Subari underscored.

MP Macharashvili commented similarly that “Like my colleagues, I also considered it necessary [to leave the party], especially after Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili’s letter was published and there was an adequate reaction from the public, it seems that the policy of providing true, objective, and necessary information to the public is justified.”

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