Ex-Parliament Speaker Usupashvili presents new, centrist movement

Georgia’s former Parliament Speaker and ex-leader of the opposition Republican Party, David Usupashvili, presented a new, centrist movement today, named Movement for Building. 

The credo of the new movement, which is composed of specialists from different fields, public servants, politicians and businesspersons, is "we care about what is good, change what is bad and create what we lack.” 

The new movement intends to name its candidates for the upcoming local elections, scheduled  for the autumn, at the beginning of July. 

We will complete the formation of the movement in the spring of 2018 and get ready for the 2020 Parliamentary elections,” Usupashvili added. 

The ex-Parliament chair, who has one of the longest political experience in Georgia, also stressed that the aim of the new movement is to build the country that would be "based on its centuries-long history and experience, which would have strong democratic institutions as its walls and would be roofed with Euro-Atlantic cooperation and security structures”. 

The concepts of the new movement were voiced as follows:

• State interests in the first place, then the party's interests;
• First draft a  program and then come to power;
• To be principled, not stubborn; 
• Be one among others, and not the only one;
• Concurrence, not rivalry;
• Criticism, not offence;
• Focused on uniting, not dividing;
• Being qualified, not superficial; 
• Dialogue, not monologue;
• Love, not hatred. 

Vakhtang Khmaladze, also former member of the Republican party, a law expert, is one of the members of the new movement. Photo by kvira.ge. 

Usupashvili quit the opposition Republican Party that he belonged to for the past 25 years in October, last year, shortly after the Parliamentary Elections in which the party failed to overcome the 5percent threshold to take any seat in the legislative body. 

The reason given for leaving the party was because of  controversy between the members of the Republican  Party over the party future . 

Usupashvili chaired the eighth Parliament of Georgia for four years since 2012.

The Republicans were the members of the Georgian Dream coalition for the 2012 Parliamentary race, in which the coalition defeated the nine-year rule of the United National Movement. 

In the last year’s elections the coalition split and the Republicans ran without the coalition.

Usupashvili served as chairperson of the Republican Party in 2005-2013. In the 2016 Parliamentary Elections he was number one on the party list