Georgian Opposition Seeks Big Protests But Election Boycott Highlights Divisions
According to RFE/RL, opposition leaders in Georgia are using local elections on October 4 as a focus to reinvigorate anti-government protests that have largely fizzled out in recent months, but a call to boycott the voting has underscored divisions in their ranks.
Mass demonstrations in the Caucasus republic broke out in late 2024, following alleged violations in parliamentary elections and a subsequent government decision to halt talks on joining the European Union.
These protests have continued on a daily basis, but turnout has shrunk amid the government’s use of targeted arrests, large fines, and media repression.
“Georgia is in a state of long running political crisis. But the ruling party, Georgian Dream, has the upper hand,” Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, told RFE/RL.
“Repression continues, but it's done quite skillfully. It's not the kind of mass repression that we're seeing in Russia. It's targeted repression that keeps the ruling party in power,” he added.
Two arrests this week highlight the point.
On September 29, prominent activist Gela Khasaya was arrested and charged with causing bodily harm during an altercation at an earlier protest in Tbilisi.
On October 1, Zviad Kuprava, a member of former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM), was detained after posting a video calling for mass protests and disruption of the elections.
Saakashvili himself is currently serving a 12.5-year prison sentence and this week was fined more than 3 million dollars. He’s been convicted of a variety of charges that he says are politically motivated.
Also this week, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire leader of Georgian Dream, issued an uncompromising statement on the current political situation.
“In the upcoming local government elections, unmasked internal and external enemies see another opportunity for unrest, coup d'état, and the realization of their goals,” he said.
Ivanishvili did not specify who the “external enemies” are. But relations with the EU and the United States have dramatically worsened in recent months, while Tbilisi has pursued closer ties with Moscow.
“Today, the situation is really bad. The country is going downhill,” Volker Weichsel, a political scientist at the German Association for East European Studies (DGO), said in an interview for RFE/RL’s Echo of the Caucasus website.
“The opposition is unable to agree on a united path – to take part in the elections or not, to put forward a single candidate or not. As a result, we see disunity which, of course, suits the Kremlin,” he said.
