Lelo leader Khazaradze leaving parliament

Mamuka Khazaradze, a co-founder of  the Georgian TBC Bank, entered politics back in 2019 after he faced money laundering charges. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda,ge. 

Agenda.ge, 01 Nov 2021 - 13:08, Tbilisi,Georgia

One of the leaders and a co-founder of the Lelo opposition party, Mamuka Khazaradze, says that he will demand the suspension of his MP status to ‘continue the fight on the street’ for the annulment of the recent municipal election results. 

Lelo, the United National Movement (UNM) opposition and several other parties have accused the Georgian Dream government of fabricating the election results and announced rallies in regions and in the capital Tbilisi starting tomorrow. 

Khazaradze says that he has been the target of attacks from the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party over the past two years and that ‘it has no meaning to work with them in the state legislature.’ 

Khazaradze entered politics back in 2019, shortly after he was charged with laundering 16.7 million USD along with another founder of TBC Bank Badri Japaridze. 

Lelo for Georgia won four seats in parliament in the 2020 parliamentary elections. 

In the recent municipal elections Lelo candidates failed to win any of the mayoral constituencies as the GD candidates have won 63 of the 64 constituencies, while the UNM  candidate won only one. 

Lelo received 2.71% of the vote in the proportional part of the race, came fourth after the GD, the UNM and the For Georgia parties.