Irakli Kadagishvili on the opposition’s participation in the local elections: This resolution by the European Parliament gave them a helping hand and told them to participate — now they’ll say, ‘Europe told us to’

"We can see that [the European Parliament resolution] will have an impact on certain actors — just as they struggle to make any decisions independently, they also had a hard time making this one.

So, this resolution gave them a helping hand and told them to participate — now they’ll say, ‘Europe told us to,’" said Georgian Dream MP Irakli Kadagishvili to journalists, responding to the report by the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which states that local elections are another test of Georgia's democratic and political pluralism and calls on the opposition to seize this opportunity.

According to him, opposition members "will also try to justify themselves by pointing to the part of the resolution that says they do not recognize the legitimacy of the government."

"We can see that [the resolution] will influence certain actors. For example, Lelo, which had been slowly shifting toward the opposition flank saying they should participate in the elections — today, this resolution opened a political and moral path for them to do so. But it turns out that all their rhetoric surrounding the 2024 parliamentary elections and the developments that followed was entirely false and based on lies. Now, of course, they’ll have to change that. Just as they struggled to make all their decisions independently, they struggled with this one too. So, the resolution gave them a push and told them to participate. Now they'll say, ‘Europe told us to.’ They’ll also justify themselves by pointing out that the resolution also says it does not recognize the legitimacy of this government. In short, this is a cascade of legal and political nonsense created around Georgia by certain parts of EU structures and bureaucracy," Kadagishvili said.