Georgian Parliament Speaker describes NGO system as “the greatest evil” imposed by West on Eastern European democracies

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Tuesday described the NGO system as “the greatest evil” imposed by the West on Eastern European democracies, arguing that its ultimate goal was the dismantling of democracy itself.

In his interview with POSTV channel, Papuashvili noted that Georgia has clearly witnessed the consequences of what he referred to as “NGOcracy”.

“I believe this is the greatest evil that the West has imposed on Eastern European democracies. Why is it evil? Because ultimately it has been declared that the goal of the NGO system, of NGOcracy, is the abolition of democracy. We have seen this very clearly in the case of Georgia”, the Speaker said.

Psapuashvili stressed that statehood and national sovereignty are based on the principle that power derives from the people, who form branches of government and authorize them to make decisions through democratic mandates, arguing that governing a society from the outside is difficult without understanding local culture, which, he claimed, led to the creation of the concept of “civil society”.

“Since society is large, broad, and difficult to govern, ‘civil society’ was created as a narrower part of society - a certain elite that represents a small segment of society, yet speaks on behalf of everyone. Civil society, it seems, turned out to be a broader concept in terms of governance, and later it was narrowed down to the level of non-governmental organiსations. Once transparency became mandatory, we saw that Georgian NGOs are almost entirely funded from abroad - that is, the entire sector is foreign-funded and acts as an executor of foreign tasks and objectives”, he continued.

He further added that the legitimacy of EU commissioners also deserved special mention, because in reality, they didn’t represent the people either.