A former US ambassador to Georgia has alleged that Georgian Deram, the governing party of Georgia, has engaged in covert attacks on the US. ambassador in Tbilisi and her European colleagues using websites and social media. According to the Foreign Policy article:
August 20, 2021 Some in Georgian Dream are carrying out what amounts to state capture, concentrating power and wealth in the hands of a small group of elites, at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is raging in the country and hurting the economy, with GDP dropping by 6.2 percent last year. Georgia has recorded a half million cases and more than 6,500 dead, a positivity rate of 10.4 percent, and only seven percent of the population is fully vaccinated. Borrowing a page from the playbook of illiberal regimes like those in Moscow and Minsk, Tbilisi has also begun lashing out at the West. In late 2019, Facebook removed fake accounts, all traced to Georgian Dream, that expressed anti-Western sentiments, some of which were specifically anti-American. More recently, websites and social media accounts linked to Georgian Dream have launched unprecedented attacks on the U.S. ambassador in Tbilisi and her European colleagues any time they have voiced criticism of Georgian Dream or the government, in an effort to silence such criticism.
Read the rest here.
Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia is the governing party of Georgia. The party was established on 19 April 2012 by the billionaire businessman and politician Bidzina Ivanishvili. It was the leading party of the six-party Georgian Dream political coalition which won the 2012 parliamentary election. The party currently holds 84 seats in the 150-seat Georgian parliament, an absolute majority.
For background on the controversies surrounding Georgian Dream, go here.
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