In an 80-minute interview with Imedi, Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili has reiterated his vow to punish his political rivals, railed against the West, and embarked on a rant fuelled by transphobic and homophobic myths.

The interview on the pro-government channel was aired on Monday night, five days before the crucial parliamentary elections.

During the interview, Ivanishvili rehashed conspiracy theories about global forces he claimed were acting against him and Georgia, while signalling the possibility of a rapprochement with the US.

He also reiterated threats he and his party had previously voiced about punishing the pro-Western liberal opposition, spoke about struggling to access his financial assets abroad, and alleged that his former ally, the chair of the opposition For Georgia party, Giorgi Gakharia sought to push the country into a war with Russia.

Ivanishvili admitted that his party had remained in power for a long period and that he didn’t even enjoy hearing his name mentioned publicly. However, he insisted that the ‘war’ — Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — had ‘changed everything’.

‘This is an exceptional situation, before the war is over,’ he said.

The ‘global war party’

In his interview, Ivanishvili claimed that ‘certain bureaucrats’ were ‘coordinating’ with local opposition forces to portray an ‘unfortunate reality’ in the country, including accusations of growing authoritarianism and democratic backsliding.

‘They’re close to holding the elections from outside’, he claimed while complaining about alleged Western interference. 

Ivanishvili described Georgia’s opposition as being controlled by the ‘global war party’, and said that as adherents of a ‘pseudo-liberal ideology’, they had fabricated a ‘virtual reality’ for the Georgian public and presented it as the truth.

Ivanishvili said that he coined the term ‘global war party’ as an alternative to ‘deep state’ — a term used to describe groups made up of different organisations or agencies that secretly manipulate governments.

'We have a genuine democracy. Take a look how many TV stations we have!', Ivanishvili added.

In the Reporters Without Borders ranking updated in early May, Georgia’s press freedom position plummeted from 77th to 103rd in the world. Earlier this year, the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom reported that the media was faced with several problems, including ‘smear campaigns, unstable funding mechanisms, threats of physical violence, and restrictive legislation’.

Ivanishvili also cited a ‘fairly positive’ interim report by the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission to reject claims that the situation ahead of the elections was ‘exceptionally tense’.

While the report, released ten days before the interview, approved of the election administration for their activities, it highlighted several concerns. These included the recent amendments to the country’s electoral legislation made without proper involvement and consensus, low public trust in state institutions, and reported cases of misuse of administrative resources and allegations of voter intimidation.

‘The elections are being held amidst entrenched political polarisation, and deep antagonism between the government and the president, and social discontent due to adoption of various legislation’, including the recently adopted foreign agent law and the ‘potential negative impact’ it may have had ‘on freedom of association and expression’.

Ivanishvili argued that the controversial foreign agent law was not intended to ‘stigmatise’ anyone, but rather to expose those allegedly planning ‘revolutions’ in Georgia.

He was not challenged on any of the issues raised during the nearly 80-minute long interview.

Post-election expectations and ‘scumbag’ Gakharia 

Speaking about the upcoming parliamentary elections in Georgia, Ivanishvili said that he did not foresee any immediate political instability following the vote, and that ‘everybody will sleep peacefully’ the day after the elections. However, he noted that he expected the ‘near future’ to be ‘very tense’ due to ‘geopolitics’.

The Georgian Dream founder urged ‘strong caution’ until the war in Ukraine was over. 

In the run-up to the upcoming parliamentary vote, he and his party have suggested that Georgia’s Western partners would stop pressuring the country to open a ‘second front’ with Russia once the war ends, a statement seen by many as hinting at Ivanishvili’s possible belief that Russia will win the war.

In his interview, Ivanishvili also reiterated his commitment to banning the ‘collective National Movement’, a vague reference to key pro-Western opposition groups in the country.

‘Those who are enemies of the people and enemies of the country should be banned […] If you don’t get rid of cancer, it will metastasise,’ he said, adding that after the ban, a new opposition movement would naturally emerge. 

Ivanishvili further stated that if anyone had good intentions for the country, they should join his ‘patriotic’ party instead of campaigning against it.

In the same interview, he emphasised that ‘even more dangerous’ were Gakharia’s For Georgia party and Lelo, another opposition party led by Mamuka Khazaradze, which had formed the Strong Georgia alliance ahead of the elections.

He accused Gakharia of conspiring with global forces by abruptly resigning as prime minister in February 2021, and that Gakharia sought to trigger a change in government by paving the way for the formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM) to return to power, which Ivanishvili claimed would lead to Georgia’s involvement in a war with Russia.

[Read also: Georgian Dream says party appointed Gakharia prime minister as ‘tribute to foreign spymaster’] 

‘This is what they [the global forces] made Gakharia do,’ Ivanishvili continued, adding that Gakharia’s party members deserved greater punishment. 

‘They were Georgian Dream members, most of them, [they were the parliamentary] majority […] Of course they deserve a strong punishment and I assure you they will get it’. 

Ivanishvili referred to Gakharia as a ‘scumbag’ for abandoning his party, a rare instance of him using derogatory language since he entered politics 13 years ago. 

He also accused Khazaradze of collaborating with the UNM whilst they were in power, and of being too eager to instigate a Russian military aggression against Georgia.

[Read more: Two major opposition groups fail to unite ahead of Georgian elections] 

He additionally criticised NATO for allegedly pushing Georgia and Ukraine into war with Russia.

‘Sanctions’ and the planned meeting with the US ambassador

Ivanishvili defended his claim of being ‘de facto sanctioned,’ again without revealing who had ‘sanctioned’ him. 

He reiterated that ‘exactly two weeks’ after the war in Ukraine began, all of his assets were seized, including ‘pieces of art’ and a helicopter that he initially couldn’t retrieve from Germany. Additionally, he claimed he had had difficulties in accessing his funds from a Swiss trust for a ‘year and a half’. Ivanishvili stressed that the assets that eventually ‘survived’ these actions were separate from those involved in his disputes with Credit Suisse in Bermuda and Singapore.

Ivanishvili claimed that those ‘sanctions’ had backfired, as they were met with public disapproval. He also stressed that he had deliberately refused to meet with officials from Western countries because that would have been ‘counterproductive’. He clarified by saying that he wanted to avoid the impression that he was involving himself in politics to resolve personal financial issues rather than deal with state matters.

Ivanishvili said that he did not expect ‘additional’ sanctions to be imposed. He added that the problems he had previously described had now been ‘settled’ and that he was ready to hold meetings with Western officials.

No foreign entity has claimed to have imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili or his family members, with the US recently denying having sanctioned him.

‘When we won the case in Singapore and Credit Suisse could not stop it from being implemented, I called the US Ambassador last week […] and asked to meet. I explained that the reasons [for refusing meetings] that existed earlier had been resolved on their own, so there was no issue on my side, and I am ready to meet.’

Ivanishvili clarified that he and US Ambassador Robin Dunnigan had agreed to meet ‘after the election’.

He also expressed hope that relations with the US would improve, adding that this would be further aided by the end of the war in Ukraine, which he anticipated would occur no later than next year.

On Pride in Barcelona and ‘men’s milk’

Ivanishvili also touched on queer rights during the interview, which he referred to as ‘LGBT propaganda’. He claimed to have prepared for the topic, pointing to a copy of 2150 A.D., a sci-fi novel, at the table where he was seated. He did not elaborate on the 1976 novel’s relevance to queer rights.

He said that he had trouble memorising longer variations of the LGBT initialism, but told the interviewer that he had pushed for the enactment of the anti-discrimination legislation adopted by parliament in 2014.

‘Of course, these people are ordinary people, and we cannot have any problem with them […] but when it comes to propaganda, you have to forgive me… Do whatever you want at home […] but check the countries, and there are statistics on this, for the results that propaganda has caused,’ Ivanishvili alleged.

When Georgian Dream introduced the LGBT ‘propaganda’ law earlier this year, they justified it by pointing to the rising number of individuals in Western countries identifying as queer, mistakenly attributing this trend to ‘propaganda’ rather than to increasing social acceptance and enhanced legal protections.

Ivanishvili urged those who doubted his claims to watch footage of a pride event held in Barcelona, alleging that it featured young children present and ‘all sorts of orgies’. He also claimed that parents in the West were forced to provide gender-reassignment surgeries for their children and that teachers were being punished for saying there were only two genders. 

‘The fact that they are putting sanitary pads in men’s bathrooms, the fact that men’s milk is the same as women’s… You [also] shouldn’t say whether someone is a man or a woman, a girl or a boy’, Ivanishvili complained.