Page 10 - GEORptNov21

– the church – is being attacked”, PM Garibashvili told journalists.
The Georgian Dream has tightened its relationship with the church and, according to its critics, has moved away from the European Union, in particular after it scrapped the 19 April agreement for political normalisation in the country.
Garibashvili and Chkhorotsku Metropolitan Shio Mujiri, who is Patriarch Ilia II's 'locum tenens', have defended each other and together condemned the opposition “who are oppressors, torturers and the enemies of the church” in the words of the Georgian prime minister.
Metropolitan Shio argued in one of his sermons at the Tbilisi Holy Trinity Cathedral on October 17 that there should be no reconciliation with ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili after some from the Orthodox clergy saw the ex-president in prison and signed a petition supporting his release.
“People today talk about universal reconciliation. They often misinterpret Christian teaching, saying that you should forgive everyone for everything, always reconcile with anyone,” Metropolitan Shio preached. “Nothing like that is written in Gospel,” he added.
In his programme on the same day, head of the opposition-minded TV station Mtavari Arkhi, Nika Gvaramia, critisised the Metropolitan, calling him ‘the enemy of the country and of his own freedom’.
It’s not the first time that Georgian PM Garibashvili defends Church officials against accusations expressed by the opposition. In September, Garibashvili stated that the release of alleged leaked files on clerics from Georgia’s State Security Service (SSS) is a conspiracy against the state and the church.
Garibashvili said that the country’s opposition ‘launched a dirty campaign’ against the patriarchate and church a year ago, noting that "their main goal is to discredit the church, the army, the police in order to demoralise them".
Georgian media outlets received thousands of files titled 'Georgian State Security Service’s compromising materials against the patriarchate’ online from an unidentified sender which contained the personal data of top clerics, pointing at alleged crimes such as spying for Russia, taking bribes and sexual relations with minors.
2.5 Georgian shows improvement in World Bank survey on governance in two categories
Georgia has shown improvement in the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) study in terms of political stability and the absence of violence and regulatory quality. The 2020 issue of the WGI compared its results to those of 2019.
Georgia received 30.66% from a total of 100% for political stability and absence of violence, which measures perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilised or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including politically-motivated violence and terrorism.
As for regulatory quality, which assesses reforms carried out by the
10 GEORGIA Country Report November 2021 www.intellinews.com