ICC-Georgia Chairman Fady Asly published an open letter on his personal Facebook page. According to the letter, he refers to Shalva Papuashvili as an illegitimate speaker of the Georgian Parliament, noting that he sold his freedom and conscience to Bidzina Ivanishvili in exchange for money and goodwill.
"Mr. Papuashvili, I am writing this open letter to you, and I address it equally to all the members of your party, the Georgian Dream. I have noticed that the members of your illegitimate Parliament get very offended and insulted when they are labeled by the population as traitors or slaves.
In this letter, I will clarify why some of those labels do apply to you while some do not.
I will start by explaining why your parliamentary majority is illegitimate: In October 2020, the then-chairman of your party, Irakli Kobakhidze, presented your electoral program to the population, which was fully based on European values and EU integration. Hence, most people who voted for you did so to endorse your European agenda.
Fifteen months after gaining a (questionable) majority in the October 2020 elections, your party rejected the European path through virulent statements against the EU and EU officials. You have therefore totally lost your legitimacy, considering that the policies you have been following since spring 2022 are not the policies for which your constituents elected you. You are therefore an illegitimate parliamentary majority.
I fully disagree with those who label you and your parliamentarians and government members as “slaves.” No, you are not slaves at all! Slaves are free people who are forced to work for someone else without any personal freedom or rights. Slavery is a condition in which an individual is deprived of their personal liberty and is compelled to perform labor or services against their will.
You are not slaves because you are not working for Bidzina Ivanishvili deprived of your personal freedom or rights, or against your will. You are working for Bidzina Ivanishvili with your free will against hefty compensations, be it financial or positions of power that allow you to enrich yourselves or benefit from great privileges.
You are definitely not slaves; labeling you as slaves is an insult to slavery. You are just corrupted politicians, corrupted to the bone, having lost all of your human attributes. You freely agreed to sell your freedom and your conscience to Bidzina Ivanishvili for money and favors, thus choosing to reject your conscience and your principles and became simple objects without conscience, manipulated at will by another human being.
I fully agree, though, with those who call you traitors, because you are traitors for betraying the Georgian Constitution, which is the supreme law governing the country, and more specifically Article 78 of the Constitution, which states the following:
Integration into European and Euro-Atlantic structures: The constitutional bodies shall take all measures within the scope of their competences to ensure full integration into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
You have betrayed Article 78 of the Constitution, both as a Parliamentary constitutional body and as a Governmental constitutional body, and instead of ensuring full integration into the EU and NATO, you have deployed every possible effort to sabotage this integration, thus betraying the Supreme Law of the country and betraying the will of the Georgian people. For that, you are traitors to your country, and you will be prosecuted as traitors.
The only constitutional body in the country that is loyal to the Constitution is the Presidency, and the only legitimate official today in Georgia is the President of Georgia, Salome Zourabischvili.
Having said that, you should be very grateful to the EU, since Georgia officially abolished the death penalty on January 1, 1998. This decision was part of a broader move to align with European human rights standards, especially following Georgia's admission to the Council of Europe. Otherwise, you and all your colleagues who have betrayed the country’s constitution would have ended up hanged under the statue of Saint George on Freedom Square.
I will add another adjective to describe your party: collaborationists with the enemy. I will give you some historical facts:
Same as you are doing, collaborationist government leaders always justify their actions by framing collaboration with an occupying or hostile power as a necessary measure to protect the nation from greater harm.
They argue that their cooperation with the enemy is a strategic choice aimed at preserving national autonomy, maintaining peace, preventing repression, and reducing the suffering of their people.
Over the past 100 years, several prominent collaborationists were destituted and punished for their actions during times of occupation or conflict. Vidkun Quisling, the Prime Minister of Norway during World War II, famously collaborated with the Nazis. After the war, he was arrested, tried, and executed for high treason against Norway.
In France, Pierre Laval, who served as the Prime Minister in the Vichy government, was also a notable collaborator. After the liberation of France, Laval was arrested, tried, and ultimately executed in 1945 for his role in collaborating with Nazi Germany.
Similarly, Marshal Philippe Pétain, who headed the Vichy government in France, was arrested and tried after World War II. Although originally sentenced to death, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment due to his advanced age and World War I hero status.
In Eastern Europe, leaders like Ion Antonescu of Romania, who aligned his country with Nazi Germany during the war, were later arrested and executed in 1946 for war crimes and wartime collaboration.
These examples highlight the severe consequences faced by those who collaborated with occupying forces, and your collaborationism with the Russian occupying forces falls within the same scope as the examples I have stated and is leading you straight to jail.
In conclusion to this letter, I state it up and loud that you and your colleagues from the Georgian Dream are definitely not slaves. You are corrupted politicians , collaborationists, and traitors, and all the evidence I have mentioned in this letter confirms it.
You can send your Titushki to beat me up any day, or to beat up anyone who names you traitors, collaborationists, or corrupted politicians. This will not change the facts, this will not change reality, and this will not change the opinion that millions of Georgians have about you and your partners in crime. The end of all of you is very clear to everybody", - the letter reads.
