The Alliance of Patriots, a Kremlin-friendly party has teamed up with some 40 largely unknown organizations and political outfits to set up the United Front of Georgian Patriots, a coalition demanding Georgia to abandon its Euro-Atlantic integration path and declare neutrality, a preferred mantra for Georgia-based anti-western forces.
The freshly-established bloc issued two declarations on January 20, among others, demanding Georgia to remove from the Constitution the provision stipulating that “the constitutional bodies shall take all measures within the scope of their competences to ensure the full integration of Georgia into the EU and the NATO.”
The self-appointed patriots instead wish to see clauses declaring Georgia as a neutral nation and defining its state policy as aiming to achieve “neighborly relations” with any bordering states inked into the Constitution.
The development comes as Moscow demands from NATO Allies to disavow their 2008 promise that Georgia and Ukraine will eventually become members of the Alliance, amid Russian military build-up in and around Ukraine.
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The newly-established coalition also lambasted the governing Georgian Dream party and the opposition for “disregarding the law and turning the political process into a cheap theatricalized spectacle, accompanied with secret dealings with the participation of American and European lobbyists.”
The group also claimed that the Georgian Dream and the United National Movement parties have during their governance “deliberately instilled in the youth a contemptuous attitude toward faith, indifference toward the homeland and disrespect for Georgian traditions and morals.”
The list of signatories includes about 10 political figures/outfits, including Soso Shatberashvili of the Leftist Alliance, Gocha Jojua of the Christian Democrats, the ultranationalist Georgian March’s Irakli Shikhiashvili (who once served political positions under both GD and UNM governments), political unknown Mamuka Tuskadze of the For Social Justice party. Other signatories are Tamar Kiknadze (erstwhile member of ex-MP Tamaz Mechiauri’s party and European Socialists party), poet Erekle Sagliani, Giorgi Kakabadze of the Para-Karate Federation and Gocha Kakabadze of the Kyokushin Karate Federation.
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The Alliance of Patriots first entered the Parliament in 2016, after garnering 5.01% of votes in the parliamentary elections and receiving six seats. In the 2020 parliamentary polls, the nativist party received 3.14% of votes and four seats. However, the outfit joined the opposition boycott, rejecting the results of the elections as falsified.
Eventually, while the party leaders refused to take up their mandates, they greenlighted four businessmen next on their list to enter the legislature. The latter four businessmen then established the European Socialists party.
AoP leaders, Irma Inashvili and Davit Tarkhan-Mouravi meanwhile remained largely out of the public eye. In the 2021 local polls, the party received only 1.46% of the votes in nationwide proportional polls.
In the meantime, the Georgian March — the noisy few organizing a number of violent rallies — turned into a political party in July 2020, but failed to cross the 1% threshold in the 2020 parliamentary polls. The party did not participate in the 2021 local elections.