Georgia is confirming its authoritarian turn and could quickly change its face after the legislative elections on October 26. The ruling party, Georgian Dream, has launched its campaign and outlined the contours of its programme, causing shock and concern among the Georgian opposition and the Western partners of this former Soviet republic in the Caucasus.
If victorious, Georgian Dream announced that it would ban the main opposition party, the United National Movement, as well as “all of its successors and affiliates”. “In reality, all these political forces are one and the same political force: the National Collective Movement.” which “serves criminal purposes”Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said on August 23 during the launch of the campaign. The founder of Georgian Dream and the country’s strongman, billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, listens “free the country from this serious disease once and for all”Kobakhidze clarified that this ban would lead to the withdrawal of the mandate of opposition MPs. “It is unacceptable that criminal representatives of a criminal political force retain the status of deputies in the Parliament of Georgia”the Prime Minister declared.
Since coming to power in 2012, the party has continued to demonise the United National Movement, led by the reformist former president and Ivanishvili’s arch rival, Mikheïl Saakashvili. But a total ban on opposition parties would mark an unprecedented hardening and push the country towards authoritarianism, just ten months after it obtained official candidate status for the European Union.
The EU, Georgia’s largest donor along with the United States, has expressed concern and called for respect for the fundamental principles of democracy. “of which political pluralism is a key element”In Washington, State Department spokesman Alex Raufoglu also said that “deeply concerned”and called on the Georgian government to “return to the path of democracy and Euro-Atlantic integration”.
“Traditional values”
The Georgian opposition, which advocates rapprochement with the European Union, is not the only one in the crosshairs. The repression will extend to LGBT+ people, who will be deprived of their rights. “in the name of maintaining traditional values”. In a speech to supporters on August 21 in Mtskheta, Georgia’s former capital and religious center, Bidzina Ivanishvili said that “So-called same-sex civil unions, the adoption of a child by an LGBT couple, sex reassignment operations and LGBT propaganda in the media and schools” should be prohibited by the Constitution. He believes that “The spread of pseudo-liberal ideology is becoming more and more dangerous in the world and in Georgia”as demonstrated, according to him, by the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games.
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