Parliament official claims “over 60%” of citizens “reject what UNM offers to country” after opinion poll

Gia Volski, an MP from the ruling Georgian Dream party and the First Vice Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, on Thursday reacted to results of a new opinion poll that showed about 60 percent of respondents intended to vote for GD if parliamentary elections were held today by saying he believed the percentage of citizens “who reject what the collective United National Movement party is offering to the country must be much higher” than the figure.

The comment followed after the survey by Tbilisi-based Georgian Opinion Research Business International put the approval rating of the ruling party at 59.3 percent on Wednesday.

Volski claimed the poll had shown that “international studies” about the country’s “democracy, justice, fight against corruption, and economic growth” were “genuine”.

On one side, there is stability, and on the other, there is destabilisation. I think that the number of people in our country who reject what the collective United National Movement is offering to the country must be much higher than 60 percent”, he said.

The poll, commissioned by Imedi TV channel, was conducted nationwide through face-to-face interviews between July 24 and August 4, with a total of 1,700 respondents, with a margin of error of three percent.