The party was set up in February by Giorgi Targamadze, ex-anchor and former head of political programs of the Imedi TV station.

It was a political comeback for Targamadze. He chaired the parliamentary faction of ex-Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze’s Revival Union party until March 2003, when he resigned from Parliament and politics altogether.

The party, which has at least four former Imedi TV journalists in its governing body, was running an active campaign under the platform of “protecting the Georgian Orthodox Christianity” which, party says, “remains foundation of the way of life for the Georgian society.”

For this purpose, the party vowed, it will initiate in the new parliament, amendment to the constitution envisaging declaring the Orthodox Christianity “official religion” in Georgia. The party claims that the status will not contradict the principle of separation of the church and the state, but it will be more than the current status of the Georgian Orthodox Church, envisaged by the 2002 concordat between the state and the Georgian Orthodox Church.

Even in its economic platform, the Christian-Democratic Movement decided to use quotations from one of the sermons of Ilia II, the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, in which he says: “Georgia’s future economic development should probably be linked to water resources.”

“Water is our most precious national wealth, return of which to the people is the Christian-Democratic movement’s major goal,” the party declares on its website.

As far as foreign policy is concerned, although the party’s website says that it supports Georgia’s membership to Euro-Atlantic organizations, Giorgi Targamadze has said for several times in his media interviews that NATO-membership should not be Georgia’s “goal in itself.”