TBILISI - Georgia's institutional crisis is approaching a point of no return. Since the ruling Georgian Dream party claimed victory after parliamentary elections on 26 October, which opponents and outside observers say were rigged, the two sides have squared off against each other. The situation threatens to deteriorate.
Protesters have thronged Tbilisi and other cities since 28 November, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced the government’s withdrawal from EU accession talks. The election of Georgian Dream's presidential pick, former footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, has dashed hopes of a compromise with the country's pro-EU faction, which represents much of the country.
The current president and de facto opposition leader, Salomé Zourabichvili, is supposed to vacate that post on 29 December. She has said she won’t step down, given what she and allies see as an undemocratic power grab.
"At this critical moment, our country needs a legitimate institution that reflects the voice of its people," she told reporters in Tbilisi. "My role is here. Exile is not a solution."
Kavelashvili, who also served in Georgia's parliament as a member of Georgian Dream, has accused the United States of influencing the opposition to achieve "a violent revolution and the Ukrainisation of Georgia."
Democratic crackdown
Speaking to The Parliament, protesters in the Georgian capital were outspoken in their criticism of the government and its efforts to pull Georgia closer to Russia, but declined to give their last names out of fear of retribution.
Alexander, a student at Tbilisi University, described Kavelashvili as "nothing more than a puppet for [billionaire Bidzina] Ivanishvili and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."
Ivanishvili is the founder of Georgian Dream and once served as prime minister.
Another student, Anna, was one of several protesters kicking footballs around outside Parliament — a derisive expression of opposition to the new president.
"If someone without higher education, whose only achievement is playing football, can become president, then we should all be considered professional footballers,” she said.
The past weeks have been marked by widespread violence and arbitrary arrests targeting those who stand up to Georgian Dream.
"What we are witnessing feels like the early stages of a dictatorship," Giorgi Butikashvili, an opposition member boycotting Parliament, told The Parliament.
He said that quasi-state security operatives without identification were beating up protesters, overseen by Zviad 'Khareba' Kharazishvili, who is the head of the interior ministry's Special Tasks Department. Butikashvili compared him to the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group.
In mid-December, Georgia’s parliament enacted new security laws that drastically limit freedom of assembly and expression. Police can detain individuals pre-emptively.
"The regime has understood that the protests are not fading away," Butikashvili said.
Lessons from Ukraine
While hard evidence of Russian interference remains elusive, Mamuka Andguladze, president of the Media Advocacy Coalition, a Tbilisi-based civil society organisation, told The Parliament that the government’s strategy is following a Kremlin-style playbook.
“The Russification of Georgia is based on two pillars,” he said. “Anti-Western propaganda disseminated through state-controlled media and brutal violence against protesters.”
Moving the state away from the path of EU membership, which requires various rule-of-law tests to be met, was an essential part of this strategy, he added.
"A weak state is easy prey for the Kremlin.”
The shadow of Ukraine's 2014 Euromaidan uprising looms large, but is not an exact parallel.
"We are different countries with different paths," Anna Gvarishvili, head of the Investigative Media Lab, a centre at the University of Georgia dedicated to advancing investigative journalism, told The Parliament. "Ukraine’s road to the EU passed through Euromaidan. Ours is the continuation of the 2003 Rose Revolution.”
More than two decades after the nonviolent shift that ended Soviet-era leadership in Georgia, “we have reached the final stage,” she said.
Yet protesters' greatest fear is not violence itself but a fate similar to Belarus. After a fraudulent election kept strongman Alexander Lukashenko in power in 2020, the state unleashed a brutal campaign against protesters to maintain status quo.
"We are fighting to prevent that outcome, but we need international support," Gvarishvili said.