Ruling party official: opposition parties joining Georgian President’s action plan “proves they are one team”

Kakha Kaladze, the Mayor of Tbilisi and the Secretary General of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Monday said a potential unification of domestic opposition parties around a charter submitted by the Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili to “rebuild trust and to forge a new political reality” in the county ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections “confirmed” the parties were “one team”.

Kaladze’s comments followed a statement by the opposition United National Movement, Akhali, Lelo, Droa, Girchi - More Freedom, European Georgia and Strategy Agmashenebeli parties that expressed a readiness to sign the charter on Sunday.

We welcome them to be represented on one platform. This confirms what we have been saying all this time - that these political parties, which emerged from the base of the UNM, may have appeared under different names, but they are one team, ruled by one hand”, he alleged.

The charter envisages abolishing “laws harmful to the European path” of the country, “liberating the judiciary” and “restoring trust”, ensuring a “fundamental reform” of the Supreme Council of Justice and creating “appropriate conditions for holding free and fair elections”.

The development follows the ruling Georgian Dream party's adoption of a law on transparency of foreign influence, which requires groups “considered to be an organisation pursuing the interests of a foreign power” - determined by more than 20 percent of their funding coming from abroad - to be registered in the public registry with the status and publicise their received funding.

The law has been met by public protests and criticism by some of the country’s foreign partners.

The parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 26.