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In an interview with Euronews, Salome Zourabichvili talks about the current wave of unrest happening across Georgia and what could happen next.
Transcript
00:00While her role as Georgia's president may be largely ceremonial, Salome Zurabishvili's
00:07personal politics aren't.
00:09She is staunchly pro-Western, sees Georgia's future as part of the European Union and is
00:14keen to see her country move out of Russia's orbit.
00:18That's put her in direct conflict with the Georgian Dream, the populist pro-Russia party
00:23that's headed Georgia's majority government since 2016.
00:28Zurabishvili has publicly slammed some of the more contentious pieces of the party's
00:32legislation, refused to sign others into law and now calls their rule illegitimate after
00:38disputed elections in October.
00:40In an interview with Euronews, she explains more about the wave of protests happening
00:45across the country and, more importantly, what happens next.
00:55Clearly not because the elections that led to this parliament and then to the government
01:03are not legitimate.
01:05They are not recognized by anyone.
01:08They have not been recognized by the Georgian population in the first place.
01:12They have not been recognized by the political forces in the country because no opposition
01:18party is winning, partly, these rigged elections.
01:23Nobody has entered the parliament, so it's one party illegitimate parliament.
01:30More important even, maybe, that our Western democratic partners have not, till now, recognized
01:38and more than one month has gone by.
01:42The European Parliament has said that these elections were neither free nor fair and they
01:50are calling for new elections, as we are calling here for new elections.
01:56The people on the street, especially after the last very provocative decision of this
02:03illegitimate government to turn their back on the European Union and turn their front
02:10towards Russia, is something that has stirred an immense protest movement in the country
02:20that is not stopping.
02:22Every day there are more people on the streets and, more important, there is a real dissent
02:30that is growing in the country, in the state institutions, where people are resigning or
02:37protesting or signing petitions, depending on which institution we are talking about.
02:49The signal of not recognizing these elections is very important.
02:53The resolution of the European Parliament is extremely important.
02:57I know there is a statement of the 27 members that is in preparation on this situation.
03:05There are measures that are in preparation.
03:08What we need is a strong support for the new elections.
03:12We are not preparing here a revolution, we are preparing a transition to new elections,
03:18because that's a stable way for this country to go forward and to go back to the European past.
03:25That's what the people are demanding on the streets.
03:28Basically, one of the main problems of this country with the European Union all these
03:40last years was that we do not have an independent justice system.
03:45I have introduced a plea in the Constitutional Court against the rigging of the elections,
03:52on which they have not even met for the time being.
03:56But we have to try all the levels.
03:59That's the way, the constitutional way to do things.
04:03And there is always hope, because it could always be that some members of this High Court
04:10at one point understand that the stability of the country is in their hands and the fate
04:15of the country.
04:16So we have to try to put pressure on them.
04:19For security forces, I've described the police is on the side of the citizens, because it's
04:24normal police that has been trained.
04:28The black guys are serving their own masters.
04:33And the robo-cops are a state instrument, which will go where the state will go.
04:39So that's what we have to watch.
04:47Georgians are not Ukrainians.
04:49We have many things in common, the two countries, because we have been basically confronting
04:55the same enemy.
04:57But things are very different because the Georgian character is very different.
05:02And the dissolution of the state institutions we are witnessing now, including the church
05:08in which we are hearing dissenting voices, which is unheard of, is something that is
05:14very specific.
05:16Even in Georgia, we have not seen that earlier.
05:19So we are confronting something very new.
05:21And we are part of something very new that is happening also geopolitically, I would
05:27say, where Russia, not winning easily over Ukraine over these past two and a half years,
05:35is now trying to win over the European Union with electoral war, I would say.
05:43It's an electoral war.
05:44They have carried this electoral war in Georgia, and we are fighting against it with constitutional
05:51means.
05:52They're fighting the same electoral war in Romania.
05:55And they have fought it in Moldova, except that Moldova was saved by the diaspora.
06:00And in our case, we were not allowed to use the votes of our diaspora members, which are
06:07numerous.
06:09So it's a strategy of Russia.
06:11And it's very important that the European Union understands that it is a strategy, a
06:17hybrid strategy, to win over countries that do not want to go towards Russia through these
06:26maybe more discreet ways.
06:30But clearly in Georgia, where we have a long experience of Russia trying to take over this
06:36country and have been very resilient to that, we are going to be resilient.
06:42And I'm sure that we prevail the will of the people.

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