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Georgia’s ruling party has vowed to outlaw virtually all of its political opponents if it wins parliamentary elections later this year.
The ban would likely leave Georgia’s already frozen bid to join the EU in tatters, after recent clashes between Tbilisi and Brussels on human rights and the rule of law.
On Friday, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said the government would seek to ban more than half a dozen parties following October’s critical nationwide vote.
That comes days after the ruling Georgian Dream party threatened to dissolve the largest opposition grouping in parliament, the United National Movement (UNM) which was founded by former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
In addition to the UNM, the other pro-Western factions with seats in parliament face being shuttered, Kobakhidze said, because “in reality, all of these are one political force.” Any MPs elected on their platforms, he said, would be barred from taking up office.
“I believe that abolishing [parliamentary] mandates will be the logical continuation of outlawing these parties. Criminal members of the criminal political forces shouldn’t exercise the status such as that of a member of Georgia parliament,” said Kobakhidze.
POLITICO approached the European Commission for comment on Kobakhidze’s plans, which he claims will not stand in the way of joining the EU, but did not receive an immediate response.
“This will effectively ban all opposition that Georgian Dream sees as a threat,” said Tinatin Akhvlediani, a researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies. “The only parallels for this kind of thing are Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus, or North Korea — it would be the end of Georgia’s democracy.”
Opposition parties have sought to join forces ahead of the vote to defeat Georgian Dream, which has faced widespread street protests in recent months over its introduction of a Russian-style law that brands Western-backed NGOs and media outlets as “foreign agents.”
Kobakhidze shrugged off suggestions that the country could be descending into a dictatorship, claiming that Ukraine and Moldova had banned political parties without burning their bridges with the West. “The same will happen in the case of Georgia,” he said.
The two Eastern European countries have banned specific pro-Moscow factions in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine and amid warnings they had been working to stage coups — but both have still maintained vibrant multi-party systems.
Tina Bokuchava, the leader of the UNM, told POLITICO earlier this week that the move to outlaw her party proved Georgian Dream has become a “Putin-style authoritarian government.”
The EU has frozen Georgia’s application for membership of the bloc amid warnings of backsliding on human rights, while the U.S. has suspended much-needed funding for the South Caucasus country over its pivot toward the Kremlin.
Dato Parulava contributed to this report.
