Zviad Dzidziguri, a lawmaker from the Conservative Party, part of the nine-party opposition coalition backing Levan Gachechiladze's presidential bid, said international election observers "should have been cleverer" and should not have put mainly positive assessments about the January 5 election.
"Making statements [referring to mainly positive assessment] of this type equals to lying 950,000 Georgian citizens, who have voted for Levan Gachechiladze," MP Dzidziguri said and added that "most of the OSCE observers were drunk" and ignorant.
Speaking in a live talk show at a small Tbilisi-based television station, Kavkasia, late on January 12, MP Dzidziguri has also attacked some Georgian businessmen for, as he said, financing Saakashvili's campaign.
"Are you crazy?" he said referring to business people and then specified: "Temur Chkonia [president of Coca Cola in Georgia], I am buying your Coca-Cola and you give this money to Saakashvili. Don't you have brains in your head? What are you doing?" He although said, "we are not threading you," but then added: "Be afraid of us. You have no right to use this money, which you earn from us, for Saakashvili."
Later in the same TV talk show another lawmaker, Davit Zurabishvili, from the Republican Party, also part of the nine-party coalition, tried to soften his colleague's remarks by saying that "OSCE election monitors were the most serious group" among international observers.