In an interview with Formula TV, Zurab Japaridze, leader of the Girchi-More Freedom Party and one of the leaders of the Coalition for Change, which passed the electoral threshold in the 26 October elections, said that in his opinion several steps should be taken to prevent the GD from legitimizing the new parliament, culminating in a mass protest rally to prevent the Georgian Dream party from legitimizing itself and officially forming the parliament.
Japaridze noted that there are concrete deadlines that put the political processes in a certain order for the coming month. At the moment, he said, the focus is on filing lawsuits against detected cases of fraud, and protests are concentrated on rallies in front of the courts and the CEC building. The next stage is the appeals process, which should go through the courts after the CEC publishes its final summary protocol.
The final vote tally must be announced by November 21. Before that date, Japaridze stresses, the focus must be on preventing the CEC and its Chairman, Giorgi Kalandarishvili, from writing the results that “Ivanishvili told them to write”. After that, however, the focus will be on the President, who, according to the constitution, has 10 days to convene Parliament. According to Japaridze, the president doesn’t intend to do so.
At the end of this 10-day period, Parliament will most likely convene anyway and proclaim its legitimacy. This will be the “culmination” and “the critical moment”, Zurab Japaridze stressed, when the whole of Georgia should take to the streets, and not allow the GD to legitimize new parliament. According to him, this should be achieved firstly by other parties refusing to enter the parliament, secondly by daily cooperation with international partners in order not to legitimize the results from abroad, and finally by holding the largest-ever rally in front of the building in order to physically prevent the GD MPs from entering the building and legitimizing themselves.
Japaridze said that if this doesn’t happen and the GD legitimizes the new parliament, events will unfold at a fast pace: The GD will fully enforce the law on foreign agents, the Anti-Corruption Bureau will resume its persecution of political parties and civil society organizations, the political field will be ‘cleansed’ and most of the citizens who are now protesting in the streets will leave the country. This would effectively turn Georgia into Belarus, the politician said. He stressed that this was the only realistic plan, and that the others would only waste time and divert the attention.
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