Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party has announced plans to restrict the political activity of several hundred individuals in its bid to outlaw the opposition through a Constitutional Court case.
Georgian Dream had pledged before the 2024 parliamentary elections to petition the Constitutional Court to ban the former ruling United National Movement (UNM) party, as well as other opposition parties that they consider to be ‘satellites’ of the UNM.
On Monday, details emerged of a new draft law that would also allow the banning of individuals from political activity.
According to the draft legislation, targeted individuals would be banned from founding, leading, or joining political parties, holding party positions, or occupying state-political or constitutional leadership roles.
‘The lawsuit will list the parties that are believed to violate the constitution, as well as the individuals whose leadership roles in political parties and other related activities would be restricted’, Parliamentary Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on Tuesday, as quoted by IPN.
Papuashvili said the list did not include all members of the targeted parties, but emphasised that it would still affect ‘several hundred members’.
‘It is important that the [list] includes individuals who have had, or still have, a decisive influence on the political decisions and activities of a specific party’, he added.
Additionally, on Wednesday, Archil Gorduladze, a Georgian Dream MP and chair of the parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee, said that the list could also include people who are not members of specific political parties but, in the ruling party’s view, align with the targeted party’s goals.
‘Accordingly, these individuals will also be barred from political activities’, Gorduladze said during the committee hearing, adding that Georgian Dream will provide separate justifications for every name included on the list.
In response to an MP’s question regarding the duration of the bans, Gorduladze replied:
‘By what term could Adolf Hitler have been barred from founding a party? Of course, indefinitely, because Adolf Hitler would never have changed his mindset’.
The ruling party’s position is that the UNM, which governed the country from 2003 to 2012, represented a criminal regime and should not be allowed to continue existing.
To underscore the alleged ties between the UNM and other major opposition parties operating in the country, Georgian Dream often uses the terms ‘UNM satellites’ and ‘collective UNM’.
Georgian Dream based its demand for a ban on the opposition on the findings of a parliamentary commission created to investigate the opposition in February 2025.
The commission’s lengthy report, released in September, not only condemned the UNM’s period in power and accused it of major crimes, but also stated that the ‘radical opposition’ — a term the ruling party uses to refer to the UNM and Georgia’s other pro-Western opposition groups — has, since 2012, ‘been a decisive obstacle to the establishment of a healthy political system in Georgia’.
‘This [lawsuit] will not apply to just one or two parties. You will see the full list once the lawsuit is submitted to the Constitutional Court and that will happen very soon’, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said on Tuesday.
OC Media
