The day after the failed coup and the raid on presidential palace in Tbilisi, ex-president Salome Zourabichvili made a statement criticizing the storming of the presidential palace, writes Speaker of the Georgian Parliament.

"She criticized the storming not because it was illegal but because, according to her, by doing so, the attackers confirmed the legitimacy of President Mikheil Kavelashvili. According to her, this was wrong because she herself is the `legitimate president of Georgia`. One may find this delusional statement odd or funny but the reality behind it is much more sinister than appears on the surface.

Political radicalism leads to terror. We saw the confirmation of this truth last Saturday, when an agitated and violent mob invaded the presidential palace in Tbilisi. While hundreds of aggressive protesters stood back in waiting for the next stage of the violent action, special groups, equipped in paramilitary gear (helmets, gas masks, pepper sprays), broke down the fence and tried to occupy the building. When the police managed to repel the attackers and it became obvious that the attempt of the invasion failed, those leaders of the radicals who prepared, encouraged, and led the coup were quick to distance themselves from the terrorist attack.

Ex-president Salome Zourabichvili were among them. That morning, she had already declared that she was not going to vote in municipal elections, held on the same day, but would be part of the radicals’ increasingly aggressive crowd, which had a clear and unequivocally stated goal – to overthrow the democratically elected government of Georgia. In the weeks leading to the attack on presidential palace, the radicals made massive analogies with the recent bloody events in Nepal as their inspiration and the threat to the government.

Salome Zourabichvili has no credibility among the Georgian electorate. Her public support stands close to zero. She has no political resource left. Then, how did she dare to undertake such an adventurous political gamble against the government? The answer is foreign support, which is the only thread that still gives life to her destructive agenda.

Since leaving the office last December, Zourabichvili has never been seen with the public. She only appears, briefly, with the radicals, or with foreign officials. What is particularly unsettling is her illegitimate use of the Presidential standard, the flag which only the incumbent president of Georgia is supposed to use. Zourabichvili takes this symbol everywhere with her, and the foreign officials, seem to be accepting and normalizing her self-declared status.

This is the kind of behavior, which we emphasized before, and which encouraged the radicals and extremists. However, we met a stonewall of silence. This was because the foreign officials either failed to understand their role or played along the radicals so on purpose. In either case, what they did was wrong. Such stonewalling pushed the extremists to what we saw on 4 October.

This is the first time that the radicals targeted the presidential palace, with Zourabichvili lurking in the background. Months of foreign officials` cultivation of her image as the `legitimate` president of Georgia would enable them to bring in Zourabichvili and thus spark a `revolution`.

None of radicals` foreign patrons has yet condemned the mob`s terror attack in Tbilisi. In fact, condemnation would not suffice any more. Those foreigners should also share the responsibility for what happened because their reckless political intrigues led the radicals to staging a coup in Georgia", - writes Shalva Papuashvili.