Ruling party Executive Secretary accuses Bundestag official of “partisanship”, calls planned visit “election interference”

Mamuka Mdinaradze, the Executive Secretary of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Wednesday accused Michael Roth, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag, of “partisanship” while calling his planned visit to the country next week an “attempt to interfere in the [parliamentary elections scheduled for October 26] and domestic affairs”.

Mdinaradze’s comments came after Roth announced his visit to Georgia and Armenia between Monday and Wednesday, with the Georgian party official labelling it a “lifeline for the hopeless opposition parties”. 

Speaking to the press, he claimed the German lawmaker was “saying the same things” as the country’s opposition leaders Nika Gvaramia, Nika Melia, Elene Khoshtaria and co-founders of the Ahali party, and made comments about Roth’s previous visit earlier this year.

He was in Parliament first, pretending to have business meetings with a businesslike expression. Afterwards, he was making anti-Government statements at a rally [against the adoption of the ruling party-proposed law on the transparency of foreign influence]”, Mdinaradze said about the Bundestag official’s visit in May.

“What would be the reaction of our German colleagues if Nikoloz Samkharadze [the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Georgian Parliament] went to Germany, demanded Chancellor Scholz’s resignation and called him certain [names]?”, he added.

The parliament official also claimed German MPs in the delegation that paid the visit in the spring had “talked down to us”, which he said “should not be the case”.

Mdinaradze’s statement was preceded by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s comments last week about his reasons for refusing to meeting a separate visiting delegation from Germany, saying a member of the German legislative body had recently participated in a demonstration organised by the domestic “radical” opposition and was “involved in a revolutionary attempt” in the country, in reference to Roth.

The Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili also expressed his “frustration” last week over the Bundestag members' “disrespectful actions” in having allegedly expressed their dissatisfaction about the ranks of Georgian officials that had been designated to meet them.