Last week the opposition party, "Grci" and "Citizens" agreed to the demands of the ruling party. Part of the Georgian opposition-the "Citizens" and "Girchi" parties-begin a new stage of internal consultations today with a meeting with the "Agmashenebeli Strategy" party of Giorgi Vashadze.

The main topic of the consultations will be the upcoming negotiations with the ruling party and the conditions under which the opposition agrees to enter the legislature. Officially, the "Citizens" and "Girchi", who have six seats as a result of the 2020 elections, did not give up their seats in parliament.

According to Levan Ioseliani, General Secretary of the Citizens party, if Georgian Dream loses the upcoming local government elections, it should commit itself to holding early elections to the Georgian Parliament. "In my opinion, this is a good initiative, which should be discussed both within the opposition and with representatives of the authorities. With this initiative, we plan to meet with Georgy Vashadze and other political parties. We want to meet the elections to local self-government bodies prepared, with the appropriate legislation, with the appropriate reform. And our task is to defeat the "Georgian Dream" in the elections in Tbilisi and other major cities," Levan Ioseliani said.

As one of the leaders of the Girchi party Vakhtang Megrelishvili noted, the elections to local self-government bodies will be a kind of test for the"Georgian Dream".

"It concerns the use of elections to bodies of local self-government as tests. If this issue is fundamentally acceptable for the opposition, technically, I think it will be possible to come up with a wording instead of a plebiscite, then how to use the local government elections, which are already taking place in the fall, as a plebiscite, and thus neutralize the political crisis," said Vakhtang Megrelishvili, one of the leaders of the Girchi party. Last week, "Girchi" and "Citizens" agreed on the following requirements for the ruling party "Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia": holding all subsequent elections according to the proportional system with a pass barrier of 0% and forming a new composition of the Central Election Commission. In their opinion, the upcoming local government elections to be held in Georgia in 2022 should show whether the country needs new parliamentary elections.

Five of the eight opposition political parties that entered the parliament following the results of the elections have already officially abandoned their parliamentary mandates. These are representatives of the bloc "United National Movement – Strength in Unity" (36 seats), "European Georgia" (5 seats), "Agmashenebeli Strategy" (4 seats), "Lelo for Georgia" (4 seats) and the Labor Party of Georgia (1 seat). The same parties cancelled their proportional electoral lists in the Central Election Commission.

Sputnik-georgia.ru