A demonstration organized by the Georgian Labour Party was held recently near the office of the country’s Parliament. The action was timed to coincide with a symbolic date: 4 years ago a similar opposition demonstration was broken up by the government. This time, the Labourite action was aimed not only against the government of Saakashvili, but against his newly-established opponent, multi-billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. Labourites accuse the latter of being a sponsor of Saakashvili’s regime and its enforcement agencies up until recently.
The decision to hold a demonstration was voiced by the Labour Party’s leaders right after Ivanishvili told journalists that Labour and some other opposition parties were in fact act in collusion with the President.
The head of the Labour party, Joseph Shatberashvili, told VK that his party has been fighting Saakashvili's regime for decades now and that he was outraged by this slander, especially coming from a person that had really supported Saakashvili in the recent past.
Despite adverse weather, hundreds of Labour activists came to support the demonstration. The crowd demanded Saakashvili’s resignation, but the opposition leaders also didn’t forget about their other rival. As the executive secretary of the Labour Party told VK, it was Saakashvili’s special forces that attacked a peaceful demonstration near the Parliament building on the 7th of November 2007, but it was Ivanishvili that provided them with rubber bullets and truncheons.
The main idea promoted by the demonstration states that Saakashvili’s regime can’t be overthrown by elections, as they will inevitably be falsified in favor of the ruling party. That doesn’t mean that the Labour Party isn’t preparing itself to take part in the elections, as one of the party leaders, Kaha Dzaganiya, said. “However, this anti-national regime can be overthrown only by mass protest actions”.
According to the Labour Party’s chairman, Shalva Natelashvili, they plan to organize an action in Washington as well, on November 23, on the anniversary of the ‘Rose Revolution”. “We will ask the US government to take back their protégé,” the chairman said, adding that he will also submit an official request to the Obama administration to ‘eave Georgia alone and to remove the US marionette from the President’s chair.”
Meanwhile, other opposition parties didn’t support Labour's initiative, unlike the unfortunate demonstration in 2007, which caught Labourites by surprise as much as disappointed them. It seems that other parties embraced Ivanishvili’s recommendation to leave the streets and work only in the framework of the legal election system.
