Georgian Parliament Speaker: no one can push Georgia back into vassalage

Georgia has long renounced being a satellite or a vassal; we left the Soviet Union not simply as a result of its collapse, but through our own conscious decision, and no one can return us to a state of vassalage, said on Wednesday Georgian Parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili.

Papuashvili characterised the opposition's activities as “salon-style talks” designed more for foreign consumption than for the Georgian public, suggesting that these gatherings are formalities intended to satisfy international donors.

“They do not understand what the Georgian people, Georgia, and engagement with the public mean. For them, such meetings are merely a formality - something to mark off so they can later report to their foreign sponsors that a meeting took place. That is why they do not want the presence of people they consider undesirable at such gatherings, so they can later inflate the number of attendees at their own meetings”, he said.

“These are salon-style meetings of radicals, detached from the Georgian reality. They think that if Pawel Herczynski or any other ambassador says a few kind words about them, it is a precursor to coming to power. In reality, the opposite is true. Every time Herczynski or another ambassador praises them, they lose more support from the Georgian public”, the speaker continued.

He stressed that Georgia consciously chose to leave the Soviet Union and was not merely a byproduct of its collapse.

“Georgia rejected satellite status and vassalage a long time ago. We left the Soviet Union not as a result of its dissolution, but through our conscious decision, and no one will return us to vassalage”, Papuashvili concluded.