TBILISI, DFWatch — Five members of the United National Movement party in Tbilisi City Council left their faction and set up a new faction, which will join the platform of the parliament election winner Georgian Dream.

The faction had 38 members before it lost the five delegates Irakli Shikhiashvili, Giorgi Nemsadze, Mikheil Kavtaradze, Merab Raphava and Zaur Dolidze. Their new faction is called Freedom.

The five accused the UNM faction of having discredited the party.

“Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava thinks we are traitors, but when the ruling team opposes its own population with violence and makes a choice between nation and party, we will always be with Georgian nation,” Irakli Shikhiashvili told journalists.

He added that there are many honorable people in UNM, but now the party is starting to disintegrate, and this process has started in the city council in Tbilisi.

The Tbilisi Mayor responded by saying that he respects the decision of any person, but that he had never heard any kind of protest from these people.

“On the contrary; I heard their toasts about dedication,” he said and compared the situation to the Russian film Garage.

“There are two characters: one of them experiments on monkeys and tries to tame them on the tundra, there is a fight of a majority who will tame. During this whole period he brakes and finally says such a phrase: I am a person of majority. I also remember second character of the movie – secretary, which also forms as majority and says timely betrayal is not a betrayal,” Ugulava said.