People didn’t like that our successful, world-class athletes are on this list of traitors and expressed their opinion, is that bullying by your definition? Such a statement made today the Secretary General of the United National Movement.

Petre Tsiskarishvili spoke about the 1st top-20 of the Georgian Dream’s election list and noted that “names and surnames are not important” [the list includes Olympic Champions Lasha Talakhadze and Geno Petriashvili].

“Regarding the [Georgian] Dream list, we should ask the question in a different way - will these people be in the opposition, if some of them from this platoon join the new coalition, which will be mainly composed of the current opposition, this is an interesting and important question, not just names and surnames. The rest, we all know, these are the Dream, to enrich this list and names, surnames, some of our famous athletes were added.

In the end, probably everything happened the other way around, the reputation of these athletes, their names were smeared, and they did not achieve the goal they had planned to ennoble their list. In the end, the main question is whether they have the willpower to be in the opposition of the future government, or whether a few - I think 3-4 of them will join the majority”, - said Petre Tsiskarishvili.

To the question, how would he respond to the bullying that followed the presence of athletes on the election list, he answered that “this is not bullying”: “Explain bullying to me. People didn’t like that our successful, world-class athletes are on this list of traitors, to make a point about that, is that bullying by your definition? According to my definition, this is not bullying, the prohibition of free speech has not yet happened here, including, people have not expressed their position on social networks”.