It’s been more than three months since parliamentary elections were held in the eastern European nation of Georgia. According to the country’s authorities, the Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2012, won the vote. This meant it would get 89 of the 150 seats in the country’s parliament.
However, as a number of international organizations have pointed out, there were serious problems with Georgia’s most recent elections.
Having sent election observers to watch the ballot, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or OSCE, concluded there were “serious concerns” about “the independence of institutions involved in the election process and pressure on voters.”
Parliamentary boycott
As a result, Georgia’s opposition parties have refused to recognize the result and are boycotting the current parliament.
In early February, 49 opposition politicians in parliament were stripped of their mandates by the Georgian Dream-run institution. The move came after the opposition politicians had themselves rejected their mandates because of what they say was a rigged election.
They are not alone. Many people in Georgia don’t accept the results either and have taken to the streets to protest. Ordinary people are being supported by leaders of Georgian opposition parties, many of whom have regularly joined the demonstrations.
The protests broke out after newly appointed Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced in November 2024 that he was suspending talks on Georgia’s bid to join the European Union (EU) for four years. Since then, the opposition has been calling for new elections, demanding that work towards integrating with the EU start again, and has also said that imprisoned demonstrators should be released.
“The strategic goal of the boycott is to deny the government legitimacy,” said Elene Khoshtaria, founder of the Droa party, a member of a larger group of pro-western, liberal parties called Coalition for Change. “If it [the current government] has manipulated the elections, then it must not exercise state power. The overwhelming majority of the Georgian people also think this and you can see that on the streets, where masses have been protesting for months.”
Khoshtaria is certain that the majority of the Georgian people do not support the current government.
Another politician who renounced his mandate in the current parliament is Petre Tsiskarishvili, secretary general of the opposition party United National Movement.
“The Georgian Dream party manipulated the elections and intimidated civil society with street gangs and the police,” Tsiskarishvili said. “Everyone in the country knows that these elections were neither free nor fair. It is neither morally nor politically justifiable to sit in a plenary hall with these people just because we got 10% of the vote.”
Political parties that don’t enter parliament don’t receive state funding, he pointed out.
“So the only platform that remains is protests, meetings with voters in cities and in the regions, and independent media and social networks that still function,” Tsiskarishvili said. “But these are also under pressure from the authorities.”
Complete control
However because of the boycott by opposition politicians, the Georgian dream party now has more or less complete control of Georgia’s parliament and has started pushing its own agenda forward.
A large number of laws have been passed, some of which have been criticized both in Georgia and further afield.
First, parliament chose a new president. This was to be former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili, who was apparently considered a “convenient” candidate for Georgian Dream as well as being the only name on the ballot. Georgia’s former president Salome Zourabichvili had repeatedly clashed with Georgian Dream members and often vetoed their proposed laws.
For instance, Zourabichvili was firmly against a law introduced by Georgian Dream in 2024, the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence. This required non-governmental organizations and print, online and broadcast media that received more than 20% of their annual revenue from “a foreign power” to register with the Ministry of Justice as “organizations serving the interests of a foreign power.”
Because a similar law had been passed in Russia, opponents of the bill often called it “the Russia law.” Zourabichvili opposed the law but it did eventually pass in the summer of 2024.
Most recently, on March 4, 2025, a new version of this bill was read in parliament, but this time it was an almost word-for-word translation of the US’ Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938. This is likely to be even more repressive. It applies not only to NGOs but also to ordinary citizens, Georgian Dream MP Archil Gorduladze, who sits on the parliamentary legal affairs committee, has noted.
Passing laws without protest
Georgia’s opposition has plenty of other actions to complain about. It’s no longer a rule that NGOs and civil society organizations should be consulted when the government makes decisions. Amendments to other laws mean further restrictions on local media that receive funding from outside the country. And the term “gender” has been removed from the country’s equality laws.
After clashes between local security forces and demonstrators at the pro-European protests, the wearing of masks, and the use of fireworks or lasers at protests was banned. Additionally in February 2025, penalties for hooliganism and disobeying police orders were toughened too.
High treason will also be brought back into the country’s criminal code, Mamuka Mdinaradze, the leader of Georgian Dream’s parliamentary faction, has announced. The crime was deleted from the criminal code in 2007 during the presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili.
The Georgian parliament has become a “crazy printing press” for laws that more firmly establish an authoritarian regime in the country, Gela Vasadze, a political scientist and director of regional programs at the Georgian Strategic Analysis Center, told DW.
“Parliament has become an instrument for legalizing the repressive measures that Georgian Dream began to use during the previous legislative period,” Vasadze explains. “The state authorities obviously think they are part of a global trend,” where this kind of thing is just seen as normal, he suggests.
Vasadze says that while he thinks the boycott of the current parliament by opposition politicians is justified, it’s also ineffective.
“A boycott doesn’t change what’s happening,” Vasadze argued. “The government is developing more and more into an authoritarian regime and is just completely ignoring the opposition.”
In fact, he suggested, the current Georgian Dream-led government is probably much happier when there’s no opposition there at all.
This story was originally published in Russian.
