The Georgian opposition party Lelo has officially confirmed that it will participate in the 2025 municipal elections. This announcement was followed by criticism from those who supported a boycott of the vote, while several party officials resigned due to disagreement with the decision.
At a briefing held on Saturday, the party stated that by taking part in the elections, it is choosing to fight on ‘yet another, additional battlefield’.
‘The only path we have today against [Bidzina] Ivanishvili’s Russian-oligarchic regime is struggle! Struggle on every possible front and every possible battlefield!’ Lelo’s Secretary General Irakli Kupradze declared.
Discussions among opposition parties regarding participation in the municipal elections have been ongoing for months. Just a few days before Lelo’s announcement, eight opposition parties — including parties belonging to the two largest opposition coalitions — officially confirmed that they would not take part in the elections.
For boycott supporters, taking part in the elections would amount to undermining the policy of refusing to recognise Georgian Dream’s legitimacy following the disputed 2024 parliamentary elections, which were marred by major violations. As part of that policy of non-recognition, all major opposition parties, including Lelo, have been boycotting parliament.
Seeking to dismiss criticism, the party referred to the vote scheduled for October as ‘de facto elections’, but added that taking part in it is a way to fight ‘against the de facto authorities’.
The justification did not spare the party from anger, including within its own ranks. Shortly after the announcement, Saba Buadze, head of Lelo’s Tbilisi office, and the party’s executive secretary, Dea Metreveli, resigned from their official positions. They also left the party’s political council, from which another Lelo leader, Ana Natsvlishvili, also resigned.
‘I believe that participating in the local elections goes against the path we all chose together after giving up our parliamentary mandates’, Buadze wrote on Facebook.
Metreveli stated that ‘On the path toward our shared goal — which is new, fair parliamentary elections and the release of political prisoners — I do not consider it appropriate for some opposition parties to participate in the elections while others remain in boycott’.
Lelo’s decision was met with dissatisfaction by other opposition parties, with the chair of the United National Movement (UNM), Tina Bokuchava, calling the decision a ‘betrayal of the common struggle’, while Elene Khoshtaria, leader of Droa, said that ‘Lelo is of secondary importance; what matters first is the people’s conscious fight’.
Lelo announced its decision against the backdrop of the party’s two leaders, Badri Japaridze and Mamuka Khazaradze, being imprisoned for eight months for failing to appear before a Georgian Dream parliamentary commission. Other opposition party leaders were also arrested on similar charges.
Seeking to convince the public of the party’s decision, Japaridze stated in a letter sent from prison that if people lose hope, ‘Georgian Dream will unimpededly achieve full one-party control over all institutions, governing bodies, and even every sphere of public life’.
‘We will not abandon the Georgian people, even if we have to defend their interests in a very unequal struggle, and the election process is exactly that’, said another party leader, Salome Samadashvili, in a TV interview.
Lelo’s announcement was preceded a day earlier by a proposal made by President Mikheil Kavelashvili to the opposition: he said he was ready to pardon opposition leaders who had been arrested in recent weeks if they expressed their desire to participate in the local elections.
In response, Lelo called Kavelashvili a ‘clown’, with Kupradze stating that neither Khazaradze nor Japaridze intended to request a pardon from him.
The only major party, apart from Lelo, that has stated it is preparing for the local elections is former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s party For Georgia.
According to a survey conducted by Social Studies and Analysis (ISSA) in June, only 20% of pro-Western opposition voters support the unconditional participation of opposition parties in the 2025 local elections. Of voters in the same category, 43% said the opposition should boycott the elections, while 26% said opposition parties should participate in the local vote only if early parliamentary elections are held beforehand or simultaneously.
In contrast, an absolute majority of Georgian Dream and its satellite party People’s Power voters — 70% — support unconditional opposition participation in the municipal elections.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
