The Georgian Parliament will begin this Monday the third and final reading of the controversial bill “On the transparency of foreign influence”, a measure inspired by the legislation with which the Kremlin has banned the Russian opposition. The country has experienced several weeks of protests against the reform: this Sunday the demonstrations continue that on Saturday led tens of thousands of Georgians to take to the streets of the capital, Tbilisi, against a reform that they fear will shatter the path taken towards their accession to the European Union and open the door to a more authoritarian Government. “Nothing and no one can stop the will of the people,” said the elected Georgian president, Salomé Zurabishvili, in favor of the country’s integration into the community bloc and against the law promoted by the Georgian Dream party, linked in turn to Moscow. Once the text is approved by the chamber, the document must be ratified by Zurabishvili’s signature.
A massive rally on Saturday capped weeks of demonstrations in the center of the Georgian capital. According to the opposition, between 100,000 and 200,000 people supported the protest against the controversial bill. For the ruling party, favored by a unicameral political system that gives iron control of all institutions to the party with the most votes, the concentration was more modest despite the images of the streets crowded with people. “Not even 20,000 people gathered,” said the head of Georgian Dream in parliament, Mamuka Mdinaradze.
The atmosphere in Georgia has become more tense as the voting date approaches. Last week, three opponents were attacked by hooded men when they were leaving their respective homes. One of them was Dimitari Chikovani, Secretary of Public Relations of the National Unity Movement (MUN), the majority party within a fragmented opposition. Chikovani indicated this Sunday afternoon in a telephone conversation that he will not stop protesting: “In a few hours I will go in front of Parliament to spend the night there. The Government tried last week to intimidate us, but that regime of terror does not work with Georgians. They gave some beatings and the next day [por el sábado] “More than one hundred thousand people took to the streets.”
“Protest, protest, protest”
The last reading of the committee studying the bill will be held this Monday and a plenary session will be called on Tuesday to vote on it. If it is finally approved, what does the opposition intend to do? Chikovani is clear: “Protest, protest and protest. “If 150,000 people on the streets are not enough, we will take out half a million.”
Although Moscow insists that the original foreign agents law comes from the United States, the Russian version is completely different and allows any person or organization that differs from the Kremlin’s official line to be banned. Broadly speaking, if the regulations of the North American country only require publishing the accounts of those people who work politically for foreign governments, the Russian one allows the veto of any public activity and the blacklisting of anyone accused of thinking “under foreign influence.” .
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Georgians protest against bill Russian style which will give the authorities free rein to demand from the media and non-governmental organizations all types of personal information about their contacts. Furthermore, the Georgian opposition fears that this is the first step towards much greater repression. On Saturday, while Georgians were protesting, in Russia the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office demanded that bookstores stop selling books by authors declared foreign agents.
The opposition and NGOs accuse Georgian Dream of using all the legal resources of its political system to silence any dissidence, from the control of justice to the exclusion of minority formations in parliamentary committees. In addition, the police have violently repressed demonstrations against the foreign agents law and some opposition politicians were attacked by unknown persons.
In December, the 27 member countries of the European Union gave their approval to the start of negotiations with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – all of them seen by the Kremlin as its sphere of influence – for their integration into the community bloc. The group imposed on the Caucasus country in return a roadmap “to guarantee democracy and the rule of law.” The new law promoted by Sueño Georgiano distances it from this goal.
A delicate balance
The ruling party is trying to consolidate power while maintaining a delicate balance between the European Union and Russia. According to surveys conducted by the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC Georgia) and several American institutes, around 80% of Georgians want to be part of the community bloc. The start of talks with Europe has given an important boost to Georgian Dream in the polls: it would obtain 36% of the votes compared to 21% for the main opposition party, and in the Georgian system, the most voted wins everything. In addition, the country now enjoys solid economic growth and its soccer team will play in the European Championship for the first time this year.
Georgian Dream has now seen an opportunity to try to advance the same law that the opposition, very fragmented, overthrew in March 2023. However, the party is playing with fire with a very polarized society: Georgia will hold parliamentary elections in October and lose the control of the camera would mean losing everything.
The party in power tries to officially express that it continues to pursue integration into the European Union, although the opposition accuses it of what it is doing in practice is distancing itself from Brussels. “The bill initiated has been associated with a change in the country’s external course, which is crude speculation and manipulation,” Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated this weekend, while reiterating that Its integration “both in the European Union and in NATO has been defined as a constitutional task of the Government.”
However, Kobakhidze at the same time accuses the West of wanting to open “a second front” against Russia in his country; and the founder of Georgian Dream, considered the true shadow leader of the country, tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, has accused NGOs operating in the country of working for American and European espionage.
It’s about maintaining power. To achieve this, Ivanishvili did not hesitate to force the resignation of his previous prime minister in January. “The popular Garibashvili was a threat, and with the party’s electoral victory seemingly already assured, the billionaire prefers to have a more polarizing figure at the helm. He will help preserve his control of Georgian politics,” says Alexander Atasuntsev, an expert at the Carnegie center, in an analysis of Georgian politics.
The polarization is absolute. The president, Salomé Zurabishvili, was elected by Georgians in 2018 and is the political antithesis of the Georgian Dream. This party has approved another measure for Ivanishvili to recover her money abroad in anticipation of sanctions.
“I have vetoed the ‘offshore’ law and will continue to veto any bill that contradicts Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations,” Zurabishvili has warned in x, the new Twitter. However, his powers are limited and Georgian Dream has an absolute majority in parliament to carry out the foreign agents law against his will.
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