Georgia’s ruling party official: protests fizzled out as funding declined following adoption of key laws

Irakli Kirtskhalia, the Chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party’s parliamentary faction, said on Sunday that the protests had subsided after key laws came into force and the protesters funding was reduced, describing the earlier demonstrations as being driven by false perceptions and support from abroad.

Responding to a question about the ongoing protests, Kirtskhalia said the decline was linked primarily to the reduction in funding following the adoption of legislation he described as essential for any independent country.

“Of course, it has subsided, and this depends on the most important factor. We all remember those protests inspired by false perceptions and funded with very large amounts of money. We have seen numerous investigations and numerous court verdicts. We have also seen, among other things, journalistic investigations into these cases, including what they were actually preparing, how they were preparing it, and where their funding was coming from”, he said.

The official said the protests had effectively disappeared after the legislative changes came into force and funding was reduced.

“We adopted [laws] within our legislative framework, which were followed by numerous so-called protests based on this theory of perceptions - protests claiming that they were supposedly fighting for the country and supposedly defending the country’s democracy. What was our response? It was simple: there is no protest without a basis. Of course, these protests had no basis because they were nothing more than so-called protests planned by agents and supported from abroad, based entirely on lies and false perceptions”, he stressed.

“As soon as the crucial laws for our country - and not only for our country, but for any independent and self-respecting country, with similar laws in force in various legal systems - came into effect, their funding was reduced. Proportionally, as their funding decreased month by month and year by year, we saw how the so-called protest based on national values fizzled out and disappeared”, Kirtskhalia continued.

He added that what remained was a smaller group of activists who, in his characterisation, continued to participate in regular demonstrations.

“What remained was a fragmented, presumably paid, so-called party activist group operating on a reduced budget, who go somewhere every Saturday or Thursday. The word ‘sect’ is probably appropriate for them because that is how sectarians and sects behave: they schedule a particular day and say, ‘Now we have to put on this uniform, walk this route,’ and then they probably have coffee or gather somewhere”, Kirtskhalia concluded.