26 April 2024
Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and claimed that Western-influenced liberals seek to undermine Georgian national identity in a keynote speech at an ultra-conservative conference in Budapest.
On 25 April, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze was among the international speakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary.
The Conservative Political Action Conference is an American conservative organisation and namesake annual event that has held conferences since 1974. The latest was the third CPAC event held by the Budapest-based Center for Fundamental Rights, in a country ruled by right-wing populist and national-conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz.
This is the second time that a Georgian prime minister has participated in the event, after Kobakhidze’s predecessor, Iralki Garibashvili, took part in last year’s conference. In May 2023, Georgian Dream abandonedtheir affiliation with the Party of European Socialists after the group signalled that it would retract the Georgian ruling party’s observer member status over Garibashvili’s homophobic remarks at CPAC.
The two prime ministers’ participation has been seen as evidence of Georgia and Hungary growing closer as Georgia’s relations with the EU deteriorate.
[Read more: EU Parliament calls for sanctions against Bidzina Ivanishvili]
Kobakhidze, a 45-year-old constitutional lawyer educated in Germany who was confirmed as prime minister in February, used his CPAC keynote address to rail against his domestic critics and ‘so-called liberals’.
While referencing Soviet Bolsheviks and Georgia’s Soviet ‘occupation’, Kobakhidze made no mention of Russia or the current Russian military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which his own government openly classifies as ‘occupation’.
Instead, Kobakhidze evoked Georgia’s Soviet history to compare the Bolsheviks to ‘liberals’.
‘The only difference between the so-called liberals and the Bolsheviks is that the latter used sledgehammers as their main weapon in the fight against religion, while the liberals fight against Christianity with propaganda, which, under the conditions of total control of the media, has much greater power than the sledgehammer’, he noted.
In his speech, Kobakhdze lauded his party’s draft constitutional amendments that would ban ‘LGBT propaganda’ and gender transition, and accused Western-influenced ‘liberals’ of seeking to undermine national identities both in Georgia and globally. In the case of Georgia, Kobakhidze alleged that they not only opposed Georgians’ Christian faith, but also advocated for liberal drug policies.
The Prime Minister identified Europe and the USA as places where ‘the so-called liberal ideology’ had ‘the most widespread roots’.
Kobakhidze also used common homophobic and transphobic narratives to defend claims that such a movement was actively engaged in ‘propaganda’ against traditional values, suggesting that ‘liberals’ were against using ‘terms like woman and man or mother and father’ and that the increasing number of individuals self-identifying as queer in the USA and Europe was a result of such campaigns.
[Read more: Georgian Dream announces constitutional changes to outlaw queer ‘propaganda’ and gender transitioning]
Irakli Kobakhidze’s participation in CPAC fell as party representatives have been holding mandatory public talks around Georgia, on the proposed constitutional amendments against ‘LGBT propaganda’.
Human rights defenders and queer activists have largely snubbed the meetings.
‘A threat to national identity’
Speaking before a range of prominent Western far-right figures including former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, former Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, chair of Spanish right-wing political party Vox Santiago Abascal, and several current and former right-wing US lawmakers, the Georgian head of government praised their strong anti-immigration positions, and claimed that ‘uncontrolled migration’ posed ‘the greatest threat to the national identity of European countries’.
Kobakhidze hailed Orbán and his government as ‘role models for everyone’ for defending Hungarians’ national identity from migrants and ‘so-called liberal propaganda’.
He echoed the common European far-right talking point on Great Replacement, noting that if the migration rates ‘continue[d] at the current pace, the local population in many European countries will very soon be a minority’.
In 2022, the European Union’s statistical bureau reported 1,120,380 illegal Georgian nationals in the EU.
In the past decade, around 2–5% of Georgia’s population has emigrated every year, with large numbers of Georgians, overwhelmingly women, seeking formal or informal employment in EU member states to provide for their families through remittances. Many Georgian labour migrants are based in Germany, Italy, and Greece, where tackling illegal immigration is amongst the key issues in the upcoming EU elections.
Garibashvili was bad enough. Now to complete the Orbanisation of Georgia, Ivanishvili/putler have inserted this vile little scrote as PM in the most pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia country in the world.
A Georgian friend of mine whose family come from putler-occupied Abkhazia, said :
“Basically we are fucked.”
The putinaZis thieved their property in Sukhumi and displaced them to Tbilisi.
Who will save Georgia from fucking putler?
The article is good, but makes a serious error :
“Speaking before a range of prominent Western far-right figures including former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott…”
Mr Abbott is not “far right”, he’s a conservative. Although to add to the confusion, the conservatives in Aus long ago named their party the Liberal Party.
“Kobakhidze hailed Orbán and his government as ‘role models for everyone’ for defending Hungarians’ national identity from migrants and ‘so-called liberal propaganda’.
Arse-licker.
What is a major concern is an extended uprising like the Rose Revolution. Putler succubus Zakharova has already stated that they will bomb Tbilisi in such an event.
There are already hundreds of thousands of anti-putler/anti-Ivanishvili protesters on the streets.
Georgia foreign agents bill draws protesters on to the streets:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68881833?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0BMQABHQlrWE0CJgi4gWmC8pHrmyycpkG1cm3GUjK3-WFNmKbBrw6DN3YE4fI6yw_aem_AR0FAh-deyIp9SS10XcvpsRwsBgn7_4OG23jdDAe3BgPOhIu7fDU1JjavbtHK5_yybw
“Dear Secretary Blinken,
We are writing to express our deep concern regarding the safety and health of the former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been in political prison since 2021, due to the inaction of the State Department to provide for his health.
Mikheil Saakashvili was the president of Georgia in 2004-2013, when he led the pro-western agenda aimed at strengthening the country’s ties with the United States. In 2008, during Saakashvili’s presidency, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied 20% of the territory, but with the help of the United States, President Saakashville acted within his capacity and did everything he could to restore control over the broken regions. Unfortunately, his efforts as president made him a permanent target of Russia, and severe health deterioration following his unlawful arrest is a familiar scheme.
In 2018, Georgian court sentenced President Saakashvili to 6 years in prison without attending. These allegations are politically motivated and in 2021, after President Saakashvili returned to Georgia, he was illegally arrested and his health deteriorated significantly due to poisoning, inappropriate treatment by migrants and inappropriate medical attention.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly appealed to Georgia to allow President Saakashvili’s treatment in Ukraine. While concerns have been expressed in both the United States and the European Union regarding the former president’s arrest and health, more decisive action is needed to ensure his health and release.
If your department fails to address these serious problems properly, it not only endangers President Saakashvili’s life, it also widens Russia’s influence in the region and hinders Georgia’s prospects for continuing democracy. Please, the State Department should take all necessary measures to protect President Saakashvili’s health and ensure his release.
Please respond no later than May 1, 2024 on progress on measures being taken by the Department to ensure President Saakashvili’s health. We appreciate your attention to this issue and believe that steps taken by your department will play a crucial role in ensuring President Saakashvili’s safety.”
With all due respect,
Michael Turner
A member of the congress
Austin Scott
A member of the congress
The plight of Georgia is practically invisible in the West with what’s going on in Gaza and Ukraine. The Western governments and press are so easily distracted. But, it shouldn’t be. It’s yet another place on earth where the ruskie mir is spreading its horrors.
A lot of Georgian men carry knives. It’s a cultural thing. They need them because they like to sit outside with their friends eating giant Georgian tear-shaped bread, or the cheese-embedded variant; Khachapuri. They also have a bottle-opener attachment.
A friend of mine was stopped by the cops, searched for no good reason and his knife taken. It was a small antique that belonged to his grandfather.
He had to pay a huge (by Georgian standards) fine and now has a criminal record. He was likely singled out because he had said a few things in front of work colleagues that were anti-Ivanishvili.
Under Saakash, Georgians were proud of their police force. So good was it that Poro imported Georgian legislators to Ukraine to improve the Ukrainian police. Remember the excellent Eka Zguladze?
The policy was successful. Under Yanukovich, the traffic police was a club for scammers; imposing on-the-spot fines and divvying up the proceeds. So lucrative was it that you had to pay a signing on fee to senior officers to get a job with them!
Under Poro, the cops improved, with many young, corruption-free university graduates hired.
Now Georgia post-Saakash is reverting to the old criminal authoritarianism of before.
“Under Yanukovich, the traffic police was a club for scammers; imposing on-the-spot fines and divvying up the proceeds.”
I remember those times, Scradge. I was stopped numerous times for speeding back. After paying my “fine” and was let go.
I was once stopped in Odessa just because I was an obvious foreigner and the cop wanted to extract money from me. I didn’t feel like paying another “fine” for nothing, and so I played dumb for the entire 10 or 15 minutes of this circus show, until the effort wasn’t worth it for him anymore and he then just simply walked away.
Those days are history. The police forces were one of the first parts of the government that were (largely) de-corrupted.
If only Ukraine hit CPAC with some drones. It would have saved the world from a lot of arsegiving
^bert