Speaker of the Georgian Parliament responds to the Estonian and Lithuanian politicians Marko Mihkelson [Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Estonian Parliament] and Žygimantas Pavilionis [Lithuanian Parliament Deputy Speaker] on the social network X.

“Today, Estonian and Lithuanian politicians Mihkelson and Pavilionis shamed Pawel Herczynski, the Ambassador of the European Union to Georgia, for officially meeting with the new Georgian foreign minister Maka Botchorishvili. Baltic politicians’ rude statements shred the remainder of the veils of their true intentions with respect to Georgia and its government. In November, both of them addressed the radical demonstrations in front of the Georgian Parliament, calling for deposing the newly elected government, and refused to recognize the legitimacy of Georgia’s parliamentary elections. It is not serious when such politicians become the faces for ‘regime change’. While their actions are of little significance, and, more importantly, of little consequence, they reveal a dangerous new trend against the democratic process in the region and wider Europe.

They tell us that elections don’t matter. What matters is foreigners’ political agenda, not people’s choice. And if a country’s population does not agree with the certain foreigners’ wishes, then, through foreign pressure, the election results can be reversed or elections restaged.

While democracy rests on equality, good governance, popular legitimacy, the rule of law, and human rights and political freedoms, elections remain its cornerstone. Cancelling, in literal and figurative sense, elections by subjecting them to foreigners’ political agenda, and the resulting arbitrary pressure would spell the end of democracy.

In the era of polarized politics and dominance of runaway social media, no democratic country can be insulated from the hazards of foreign pressures on its electoral system and the election process. When the reality of facts is superseded with the clouds of perceptions in the service of narrow political agendas of particular groupings of foreign parties and politicians, both democracy and regional security suffer.

The undue pressure exercised against the Georgian government can be one of the early signs of these troubles in wider Europe. And this issue should be addressed before it acquires an unfortunate tendency to spread”, - writes Shalva Papuashvili.