The United States Embassy in Tbilisi openly stood for the pro-Western opposition forces, criticizing the failure of a parliamentary vote to change the electoral system.
This was reported by the Georgian edition of News Front.
Lately, another scandal erupted in Georgia when the ruling “Georgian Dream” party split, failing to vote on the bill, which was supposed to ensure the holding of the 2020 parliamentary elections only according to the proportional system.
This was one of the demands of the pro-Western opposition in anti-Russian actions that broke out last summer. The country’s authorities then promised that a new system would be adopted, which did not happen. The opposition has already blamed the Head of the ruling “Georgian Dream”, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is considered the country’s informal leader, for the incident. It is assumed that the rebellion in the ruling faction was artificial, since Ivanishvili did not resist the decision of his circle.
In response to this, the seven most ardent pro-Western liberals from the “Georgian Dream” left the parliamentary majority, and the opposition began to pitch tents in front of the Parliament and announced the upcoming overthrow of authorities.
These events were not left without comment from the American embassy, where they criticized the failure of the bill.
“The US Embassy has previously positively assessed the Georgian Dream Party’s intention to switch to the proportional parliamentary electoral system as an important step in democratic progress and building trust between political parties. We regret that despite the support from the opposition parties, the constitutional amendments were not supported by a sufficient number of “GM” deputies”, – the diplomatic press release said.
It is worth noting that such changes are also important for Washington, because they give more chances to pro-Western forces to go to the legislative body of Georgia. This is very important against the background of the fact that the opposition’s positions were shaken after the summer Russophobic campaign, which led to the cessation of flights with Russia and, as a result, the failure of the tourist season.