The Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, has called the statement issued by the British Embassy in Georgia, in which the UK expresses deep concern over the freezing of the accounts of seven non-governmental organizations, “unfriendly.”
In a statement released on social media, Shalva Papuashvili speaks of the British Embassy’s “donation of money to organizations with an extremist agenda,” and states that this has raised “legitimate suspicions in the public that the Embassy’s goal might not be to facilitate the holding of local elections, but rather to financially empower individuals with the goal of sabotaging the elections.”
According to Papuashvili, he called on the Embassy to explain the issue to the public in order to dispel doubts, but the Embassy “left the public’s questions and concerns unanswered.”
“I would like to remind the public that just a few weeks ago, the British Embassy attempted to provide money to organizations with an extremist agenda, namely Tamar Chergoleishvili’s party wall newspaper “Tabula” and Gia Japaridze’s radical organization “Academy of the Future” of the National Movement No. 5.
In both cases, the pretext for the funding attempt was the alleged preparation of journalistic material related to local elections and election observation, whereas the stated goal of both entities is to disrupt the elections.
Of course, this raised legitimate suspicions in the public that the Embassy’s goal might not be to facilitate the holding of local elections, but rather to financially empower individuals with the goal of sabotaging the elections.
At the time, I called on the Embassy to be fully transparent on this issue and explain to the public how it turned out that the embassy was trying to fund partisan, radical groups and also to make public who it was funding during the 2024 elections.
Traditionally, the embassy has left the questions and concerns of the Georgian public unanswered. In return, we received another unfriendly statement towards the Georgian people,” Papuashvili writes on Facebook.
Shalva Papuashvili on British Embassy statement: We’ve received another unfriendly statement towards the Georgian people
