Georgian Dream satellite party People’s Power will exit majority to create ‘healthy opposition’

Georgian Dream’s satellite group, People’s Power, are repeating a move made over two years ago, aiming to replace the so-called ‘foreign-funded’ and ‘radical’ opposition shortly after one of their founders was groomed by the ruling party to assume the role of Georgia’s sixth president.

On Friday, Guram Macharashvili, an elected MP from the ruling Georgian Dream party’s list and Executive Secretary of the People’s Power party, announced that his party is leaving the parliamentary majority, stating that this would ‘lay the foundation for the existence of a healthy opposition in Georgia’.

The announcement came the day before Mikheil Kavelashvili, one of the founding members of the aspiring opposition group, is set to be elected as Georgia’s next president by the ruling party through the electoral college, which is controlled by Georgian Dream. The four pro-Western opposition groups, which officially exceeded the 5% parliamentary threshold during October’s parliamentary elections, have recently pledged to boycott the presidential elections, declaring that they will view the new president as just as illegitimate as the new parliament.

With no opposition members attending or endorsing the work of the newly convened parliament, People’s Power’s formal departure from the parliamentary majority has been widely interpreted by critics as Georgian Dream’s attempt to deflect accusations of operating as a ‘one-party’ legislature.

Macharashvili claimed on Friday that as a ‘healthy opposition’ force, his People’s Power would replace a ‘foreign-funded radical opposition’ force in Georgia that he said was unable to ‘debate the government for the country’s development and to criticise the government for progress’. 

The most recent instance of People’s Power declaring its ‘distancing’ from Georgian Dream was in June 2022, though they remained part of Georgian Dream’s parliamentary majority for several months afterward. 

Although presenting themselves as independent from Georgian Dream, People’s Power refrained from registering as a party until March this year, only to campaign on Georgian Dream’s ticket this autumn.

An ‘opposition party’ that amplifies Georgian Dream’s anti-Western messaging

The perceived close ties between People’s Power and the ruling party, coupled with their public praise for Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, have led some segments of local critical media to label the party’s members as ‘Ivanishvili’s deputies’.

Upon announcing their departure from Georgian Dream the first time in mid-2022, its founding members, including the current Georgian Dream presidential nominee Mikheil Kavelashvili, pledged to speak ‘more openly’ about developments ‘behind the scenes’ about ‘the EU, members of European Parliament, the US, [and] foreign ambassadors’ than the ruling party has been able to.

Since then, People’s Power has leveraged its parliamentary platform and the airtime of pro-government channel PosTV, which its prominent MP Viktor Japaridze acquired in 2022, to advance a narrative that later evolved into a conspiracy theory. The nebulous theory accused unnamed global powers of orchestrating sinister plans against Ivanishvili, his Georgian Dream party, and Georgia itself. 

This theory was later fully embraced and refined by Georgian Dream. 

In the most recent parliamentary elections in October, Georgian Dream and People’s Power campaigned on a pledge to protect Georgians from the alleged efforts of a vaguely defined ‘global war party’ allegedly intent on dragging the country into a conflict with Russia.

Through their weekly statements, People’s Power has also advanced the narrative that the US, via its local ‘agents’ — the United National Movement-led government under ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili — provoked Russia’s invasion of Georgia during the August 2008 war.

The theory was fully articulated by Ivanishvili himself during his parliamentary campaign speeches, where he went so far as to suggest that Georgians owed an apology to South Ossetians for the actions of the previous Georgian government.

[Read more: Anger in Georgia after Ivanishvili vows to apologise to South Ossetians for 2008 War] 

People’s Power was also responsible for the controversial foreign agent bill, which Georgian Dream supported and ultimately passed in May this year, pushing the country’s relations with its strategic partners, the EU and US, to their lowest point.