The Daily Beat: 22 February
President Salome Zurabishvili continues meetings with civil society, politicians, media, and professionals working to support Georgia on its path to EU integration. On February 21, the President met with leading European researchers working on EU enlargement issues and experts from local think tanks working as part of the ongoing Horizon Europe project. In her welcome speech, Salome Zurabishvili spoke of the existential importance of EU enlargement for Georgia, Ukraine, and the EU’s security and resilience.
Speaker Shalva Papuashvili presented the last Annual Report on the work of the Parliament before the 2024 elections, not missing the opportunity to slam the President, civil society, and the opposition. In his speech, Speaker Papuashvili noted that despite the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, radical opposition, and their allied CSOs, the Parliament managed to secure EU candidate status for the country while maintaining peace and security. He also accused President Zurabishvili of dividing the country and promoting radicalization.
Transparency International – Georgia (TI-Georgia), a local watchdog, released its quarterly newsletter on political donations, indicating that in the last quarter of 2023, the ruling Georgian Dream party received a donation of GEL 9.5 million (around USD 3.5 million), accounting for 93% of all political donations, which is 13 times more than all other political parties combined. According to TI-Georgia, all other opposition parties received about GEL 700 000 (around USD 256 000) in donations.
The major opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM), continues to bleed its members as 70 people left the party in the western Georgian city of Zugdidi, claiming to join the new political movement of the former party chair Nika Melia. The UNM’s former leader, Nika Melia, was ousted from the party last year by the current chair, Levan Khabeishvili. Melia intends to establish his political movement and run independently in the 2024 parliamentary elections.
The de facto leader of occupied Abkhazia, Aslan Bzhania, questioned the presence of the USAID in Abkhazia in light of the alliance with Russia and the full-scale war in Ukraine, saying that the USAID’s activities have been banned in Russia since 2012. “In these difficult times, when there is a large-scale war, can we, as allies and strategic partners of Russia, allow an organization unfriendly and hostile to Russia to operate on the territory of Abkhazia?” – Bzhania asks rhetorically, allegedly addressing the Kremlin’s man in charge of occupied Abkhazia’s “foreign relations,” Inal Ardzinba at the meeting.
