EU questions democracy only if liberals lose – member state’s FM

Hungary and Georgia have faced the same criticism from Brussels, Peter Szijjarto has said

The EU would not be questioning the results of the recent Georgian elections had the liberals won, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has told RT Arabic.

The ruling Georgian Dream party, which seeks 'pragmatic' relations with all of its foreign partners, including Russia, won 54% of the parliamentary votes in last Saturday’s election, but Brussels has sided with opposition parties that are claiming the contest was rigged.

“I understand that this is against the will of Brussels. This is against the intention of the liberals,” Szijjarto told RT Arabic on the sidelines of a security meeting in Minsk on Thursday.

“The Georgian Dream party is a sovereignist party, is a conservative party, is a pro-peace and pro-family party, so absolutely far away from [the] liberal mainstream,” he added.

“In case there’s a sovereignist conservative party to win the election, immediately the democratic nature of that given political system is being questioned. If the opposition parties had won, now you’d hear from Brussels that the democracy in Georgia is fantastic,” the Hungarian diplomat told RT.

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Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party has faced similar criticism from the EU over the past 14 years, Szijjarto noted, describing it as “nothing new under the sun.”

Four opposition parties, including one brought to power by a US-backed ‘color revolution’ in 2003, accused the government of “stealing” the election. Georgia’s president, the French-born Salome Zourabichvili, has sided with the opposition but failed to offer any evidence for the alleged irregularities, arguing that her feeling about it being a “Russian operation” is good enough.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban visited Tbilisi earlier this week, in the immediate aftermath of the election, to congratulate Georgian Dream. His trip was roundly denounced by 13 EU member states who sided with the opposition.

Orban has pointed to televised exchanges in the European Parliament to accuse some EU leadership figures of plotting a “regime change” in Budapest because his government does not toe the line dictated by Brussels.

During Szijjarto's trip to Belarus for the 2nd Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security he also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to discuss a wide range of bilateral issues and follow up on the July meeting between Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.