{"id":13548,"date":"2024-12-21T19:54:33","date_gmt":"2024-12-22T00:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/?p=13548"},"modified":"2024-12-28T16:32:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T21:32:10","slug":"uprising-for-democracy-in-the-caucasus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2024\/12\/uprising-for-democracy-in-the-caucasus\/","title":{"rendered":"Uprising for democracy in the Caucasus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The country of Georgia, a small nation of 3.8 million people in the Caucasus, has been thrown into a profound crisis. Its people have risen up against the ruling party, Georgian Dream, over the passage of its Russa-style \u201cforeign influence law,\u201d homophobic anti-LGBTQ propaganda law, rigging of the recent election, and suspension of accession talks for membership in the EU.<\/em><\/p>\n

The billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili pulls the strings behind Georgian Dream. He is the country\u2019s richest oligarch and possesses a fortune of $6.4 billion, which is nearly the size of the government\u2019s entire budget and a fifth of the country\u2019s GDP. He and his party, whatever their clashes with the West and their tilt toward Russia, collaborate with all the imperialist powers and multinational corporations in the plunder and exploitation of the country\u2019s people, wealth, and resources.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fed up with such authoritarianism and exploitation, the Georgian people have erupted in mass protest against their government and for democracy and equality. Georgian Dream has responded with utmost brutality, repressing protests and arresting protestors. But the movement shows no signs of backing down and as we publish, the mass protests continue<\/span><\/a>, for the twenty-fourth consecutive day. The country stands on a knife edge.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Here Tempest\u2019s Ashley Smith<\/b> and Posle Media\u2019s <\/span>Ilya Budraitskis <\/b>interview Georgian activists and scholars<\/span> Ia Eradze<\/b>, <\/span>Luka Nakhutsrishvili<\/b>, and <\/span>Lela Rekhviashvili<\/b> about the roots of the uprising, its trajectory, and Georgia\u2019s place in global capitalism and the imperialist order.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Ilya Budraitskis &<\/b> Ashley Smith<\/b>: <\/span>The people of Georgia have risen up in a new mass protest movement against the Government. The roots of it are, in part, a response to the results of the recent election that brought Georgian Dream back into power. What did they run on? What were the opposition parties and what were their platforms? Were people satisfied by those options? What were the official results? Were the elections rigged?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Luka Nakhutsrishvili<\/b>: We are in the midst of a mass democratic uprising against the Georgian Dream government. Hundreds of thousands peacefully protest in the main square in Tbilisi and in cities and towns throughout the country. In the past two weeks, we have seen protest marches held across all of Tbilisi at all times. More and more professional groups and neighborhoods have started to self-organize. This is unprecedented in our recent history.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The immediate root of the protests is the profound crisis of legitimacy produced by the ruling party who is following the script that Viktor Orban used in Hungary to turn its government into an authoritarian regime. But Georgian Dream has gone further than Orban-style illiberal democracy by rigging the election and cracking down on protesters in a way that is more reminiscent of Belarus and Russia. The suspension of accession talks with the European Union was only the last drop.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years, Georgian Dream has taken a dramatic far-right turn. When it came to power in 2012, it claimed to be social democratic and was part of the socialist bloc in the European Parliament. While many worried it might tilt toward Russia, it remained in support of EU integration and accession to NATO.<\/p>\n

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it made a complete U-turn to adopt Euroscepticism, embrace right-wing nationalism, advocate reactionary gender politics, propel conspiracy theories into the political mainstream, and express open sympathies with Russia.<\/p>\n

Georgian Dream ran on a platform of fear-mongering, deploying the slogan \u201cchoose peace, not war\u201d paired with images of a flourishing Georgia on one side and on the other a destroyed Ukraine. Their implication was clear; if you vote for the opposition Georgia will end up invaded and occupied by Russia.<\/p>\n

As for Georgian Dream\u2019s base, while it lost a lot of its voters who are sympathetic to EU-integration, it has gained support among far-right nationalist voters, who approve of their anti-LGBT law, oppose Washington\u2019s supposed plan to drag Georgia into a global war, and express hostility to EU bureaucrats they claim are violating Georgian sovereignty. The rest of their voters supported them out of fear of war, which Georgian Dream cynically manipulated.<\/p>\n

The four main opposition parties coalesced into coalitions to challenge Georgian Dream in the election. They are parties of the technocratic establishment, most of them affiliated to the previous government, and proved unable to address the grievances of the vast majority. Most voters don\u2019t like them and voted for them tactically to defeat Georgian Dream or at least stop them from winning an outright majority and ruling on their own.<\/p>\n

IB & AS: <\/b>In the end, Georgian Dream did win a majority amidst wide-scale allegations that it had rigged the results. Is that true?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

LN<\/b>: Yes. Polls indicated it would remain the largest party but without enough votes to independently form a government (like Kaczynski\u2019s far-right party after last year\u2019s election in Poland). No one predicted it would win with 54 percent of the vote. To ensure that result, it resorted to every authoritarian trick imaginable, basically turning the vulnerable social condition of most of the population, which it has systematically reproduced, into an instrument of power.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The party organized what we call a voting carousel to help their supporters vote in multiple places to drive up its results. Georgian Dream also bullied people into voting for it with the threat of cutting off people’s access to our minimal social welfare system, including medical care. They intimidated workers in the public sector like schoolteachers with the threat of losing their jobs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The security forces told people with loved ones in jail that if they did not vote Georgian Dream they would not get fair trials. They took away the ID cards of those whom they knew supported the opposition parties to make it hard for them to vote.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They made it very difficult for the hundreds of thousands of emigres to vote. Why? Because this group had left the country out of frustration with its politicians and poverty and are most inclined to vote for the opposition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Georgian Dream then overrode the lawsuit that the president had filed to declare the elections unconstitutional because of mass violations of election laws. They didn\u2019t even wait for the decision by the court they control to convene the parliament\u2013something that clearly violates the Constitution. Georgian Dream thus did everything to further exacerbate the crisis of legitimacy engendered by how openly and badly they rigged the election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

IB & AS: <\/b>The trigger of the uprising is Georgian Dream\u2019s decision to suspend the process for accession to the European Union. Why did it decide to do this, especially given that a majority of Georgians support integration?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Ia Eradze<\/b>: Georgian Dream likely suspended the accession talks because it faced little protests after it rigged the election. It also does not want to agree to the EU\u2019s conditionalities for democratic reform, which would threaten its hold on power. Finally, Russia no doubt put pressure on it behind the scenes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their suspension of talks has transformed the situation and awakened people like me who were shocked by the election results. I felt paralyzed for about two weeks. I couldn’t do anything. There were demonstrations after the elections, organized by opposition parties, but they were not that large.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The small turnout was a result of collective paralysis. It took weeks for people to grasp the enormity of the rigging that gave Georgian Dream such a victory. Frustration began to accumulate under the surface. Georgian Dream\u2019s announcement of the suspension of accession talks, which violates our Constitution, broke the dam of welled-up anger and it has burst forth throughout the country.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In many ways, their announcement is fortunate. I was really afraid that they might pretend to go along with the EU talks, faking agreements, while they instituted authoritarian rule. That would have been far worse. Luckily for us, they overreached and now we are in the midst of a mass movement against the government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most people are not protesting just about EU accession. We are out in the streets to stop an authoritarian government from continuing to run roughshod over our Constitution, our rights, and our livelihoods. We are protesting to defend our democracy against Georgian Dream\u2019s transformation of every state institution, from the schools to the courts, into tools to serve its interests and those of the oligarchs who control it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n