Around 300 Georgian journalists from three opposition television channels, Pirveli, Mtavari, and Formula, and supporters of two opposition parties, United National Movement and Lelo For Georgia, gathered outside the parliament building in Tbilisi on Saturday evening to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and that the people who assaulted journalists on July 5 be brought to justice.
Almost all speakers at the rally accused the current government of rejecting Western values and “wanting to return into Russia’s sphere.”
One of them, the country’s former president Giorgi Margvelashvili said: “We Georgians always had a choice which side to take. Ivane Javakhishvili (the founder of Tbilisi State University) was Georgian and so was Sergo Ordzhonikidze who in 1921 reported to Moscow that a Red Banner had been flown over Tbilisi. We made our choice and will never renounce it: it is a choice in favor of the Georgia of tomorrow not being Russian.”
The rally organizers said that on Sunday, July 18, when Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri will be speaking in parliament, he will be met with a “corridor of shame.”
This week opposition television journalists staged several protests to demand the prime minister’s resignation, whom they hold responsible for the beating on July 5 of several dozen journalists by an aggressive mob protesting against an LGBT march in the center of Tbilisi.
