On 31 March, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists that the media campaign in favour of "vetting" [a mechanism for assessing the integrity of judges taking up positions in the judicial system] resembled Soviet-era propaganda methods. "When it comes to the judicial system, everyone should speak with facts. To this day, we do not hear any real facts, and therefore they have to conduct a Soviet-style campaign against the judicial system without any facts, without any arguments. This is exactly the Soviet style and it is a pity that such Soviet-style campaigns are carried out by the people who turned the judiciary before 2012 into an instrument of oppression," argues Kobakhdze.

"For years, the judiciary and judges have been stigmatised. A term was coined for it, it was a clan, and so on. This is the usual Soviet-style propaganda, unfortunately carried out by foreign agents of influence in Georgia. Society has to face all this and face the truth. The truth is that after 2012 the situation in the judicial system changed radically, when the court was in the hands of these agents of foreign influence, then this institution was used as one of the main tools to oppress people. Today, these agents of foreign influence are campaigning against a judiciary that has been fundamentally transformed since 2012. This Soviet-style propaganda is absolutely unacceptable to me personally," the Prime Minister said.

The Prime Minister went on to say that this should not be tolerated by the public and that the party would always speak out against these agents of foreign influence.

Irakli Kobakhidze also answered journalists' questions after the presentation of the annual report of the Anti-Corruption Bureau. Asked whether the corruption uncovered in the healthcare system was the reason for the resignation of former Health Minister Zurab Azarashvili, the Prime Minister replied that the resignation had nothing to do with the revealed scandal.

The Prime Minister also said that Georgia was doing well in the fight against corruption and was ahead of ten EU countries: "According to all international rankings, we have good data on the absence of corruption. We are ahead of all EU candidate countries and up to ten EU member states. However, the fact that about 20 EU member states are ahead of us shows that there is much more to be done to fight and reduce corruption in our country".