Former head of the United National Movement (UNM) opposition party Grigol Vashadze has joined Giorgi Vashadze’s Strategy Aghmashebeli ahead of the October 2 municipal elections.
The party has plans to nominate a joint candidate for Tbilisi mayor.
Georgian Dream ruling party MPs say that both Giorgi and Grigol Vashadze ‘come from the UNM’ and public trust in them is ‘very low.’
The leaders of the new coalition have not changed neither their behaviour nor actions and the public attitude towards them remains the same,” Georgian Dream ruling party MP Guram Macharashvili stated.
The leader of the opposition Girchi party Iago Khvichia says that it would be better for the opposition to be focused on the common goal of defeating the GD in the elections, rather than the creation of new coalitions and spending time on bureaucratic issues.
Grigol Vashadze left the UNM chairmanship back in December 2020, shortly after the 2020 parliamentary elections ‘because of odious figures in the party’ and attacks on the diplomatic corps by the opposition following the elections.
He said that he had done his best as the head of the party since January 2017 to make the party stronger.