PM Irakli Garibashvili said that opposition UNM party’s plan to hold a protest rally on November 15 is “ridiculous.”

Accusing the government of “doing nothing” to counter Moscow’s attempts to “annex” Abkhazia, UNM said it will hold a protest rally in Tbilisi center on November 15.

“It’s ridiculous of course. I don’t want to comment on a protest rally announced by some traitors,” PM Garibashvili told journalists on October 29.

“I was told that they [UNM] are planning certain provocations,” he continued. “The fact that they don’t care about Abkhazia, our country, our citizens, is not news and we all know it very well. The fact that Abkhazia and Ossetia are occupied, the fact that 20 percent of [Georgia’s] territory is occupied by Russia is because of them [UNM]. We lost Kodori [gorge in breakaway Abkhazia in 2008] and more than 100 villages [in breakaway South Ossetia in 2008] and received 25,000 more displaced people as a result of their [UNM’s] policies and now they are planning a protest rally – against what? They [UNM] should be holding protest rally against themselves.”

“I have been informed that they [UNM] are planning provocations and they need this planned rally in order to plot these provocations. They are planning to pay 15 Lari to citizens, to poor citizens, whom they are planning to bring in [Tbilisi] from regions and villages and to then make them beat each other – that’s the [United] National Movement and I don’t want to waste time on them,” the PM said.