Parliament Speaker describes foreign funding of the “Campaign against the Georgian Dream” as “undemocratic, Russian-style”

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Thursday that the sources of alleged foreign funding of the domestic “campaign against the Georgian Dream party” constituted “interference” in next month’s parliamentary elections and “influencing the will of Georgian voters.”

Papuashvili said the development – “whether it is an American or a European foundation” – was “undemocratic and Russian-style behavior.”

“We are monitoring the pre-election environment and see that it is developing in a calm environment. We see only excesses on the part of the opposition United National Movement party. I am not saying anything about (their) lies, disinformation. These are (one) kind of violations, and another is foreign interference in Georgian elections,” the spokesman claimed.

Summing up the Danish government-sponsored and countrywide Democracy Festival, Papuashvili said it was “good that they stopped (funding it). It seems as if they have finally understood that you cannot interfere in the elections of a friendly country.”

“We do not interfere in the Danish elections, and Denmark should not interfere in the Georgian elections either. At first we could see that this donor organization was a bit stubborn and thought it was done for good. When they analyzed the issue and thought about it, they seem to have finally understood it,” he continued.

Papuashvili further claimed that the foreign-funded “campaigns” were “presented as voter education campaigns,” while representatives of Transparency International Georgia, including its director Eka Gigauri, were instead “directly campaigning against the ruling party.”