Since campaigning for Georgia’s municipal elections began last month, major opposition groups have claimed that the authorities have been pressuring candidates to drop out and their supporters to disengage.
On 5 September, opposition group For Georgia claimed that dozens of their candidates had retracted their candidacies for the 2 October local elections as a result of pressure from the authorities.
Officials from the ruling Georgian Dream party have dismissed the allegations.
On Sunday, For Georgia’s Deputy Chairwoman Natia Mezvrishvili cited Vartan Cholakhiani, third in their proportional list for the Akhalkalaki self-government body, and Koba Gelashvili, their majoritarian candidate in the Adigeni Municipality, as just two examples.
Mezvrishvili claimed that they as well as others withdrew after ‘pressure from the State Security Service’.
‘He [Koba Gelashvili] was threatened with having his children fired from their jobs’, Natia Mezvrishvili said in a press conference.
In recent days, pro-government TV channels Imediand PosTVhave extensively reported the cancellations by For Georgia party representatives, mostly from Georgia’s southern regions.
Some reports included For Georgia’s former representatives denying they had consented to run, something that Natia Mezvrishvili criticised as another sign of government pressure.
Giorgi Gakharia, who worked in various government positions under the ruling Georgian Dream party since 2013, abruptly resigned as PM in February. Photo: Facebook/GakhariaGiorgi
Announcing his run for Tbilisi mayor on 1 September, For Georgia’s leader and ex-Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia accused the Georgian Dream government of using illegal tactics similar to their predecessors, the United National Movement (UNM).
The For Georgia party claimed on 5 September that they faced new cases of politically motivated pressure days after reporting previous alleged cases, with no follow-up from law enforcement agencies that are responsible for looking into such claims.
For Georgia also claimed that on 16 August, their supporter Akaki Bartaia was detained for illegal arms possession in the city of Mtskheta and that the police planted firearms as evidence against him.
Bartaia is well-known as a victim of police misconduct when in 2004 police planted evidence to implicate him in the high-profile killing of Amiran (Buta) Robakidze.
‘Nationwide trend’
On 1 September, Georgian Public Defender Nino Lomjaria reported 62 possible cases in which public officials were dismissed due to their political affiliations with the For Georgia party and Gakharia. Lomjaria added that she forwarded more than half of them to law enforcement agencies for further investigation.
The International Society for Fair Elections And Democracy (ISFED), a Georgian election watchdog, confirmed the same day that there appeared to be a nationwide ‘trend’ of politically motivated firings of public employees, ‘mostly directed at supporters or sympathisers of the For Georgia Party’.
These possible cases, according to ISFED, included the firings of two relatives of For Georgia’s coordinator in Samtskhe-Javakheti region Levan Tatoshvili, Batumi-based Suliko Beridze losing her job after attending the opening of a For Georgia regional office, and Zugdidi-based Kesaria Tsulaia being fired after receiving warnings against sharing For Georgia’s videos on Facebook.
Similar cases were reported by For Georgia’s members from the municipalities of Gori, Tkibuli, Poti, Dusheti, and Khulo.
Early on 16 August, Kakhaber Kemoklidze, For Georgia’s political secretary and a former State Security Service (SSSG) official, claimed that representatives of law enforcement agencies tracked their movement and their party events in Georgia’s Kakheti region.
Opposition groups Girchi, European Georgia, and the United National Movement, have also claimed similar violations this month.
On 5 September, UNM’s Levan Bejashvili said that four members from their electoral list in the Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda municipalities were pressured to formally withdraw their candidacies.
European Georgia member Gigi Tsereteli also claimed that Rusudan Kovziridze, their majoritarian candidate in the Terjola Municipality was targetted with an audit on the day after she announced that she was going to campaign during her vacation.
The leader of the Girchi — More Freedom group, Zurab Girchi Japaridze, said that the SSSG had ‘threatened’ their candidates over the phone and that some of them had already asked them to be removed as candidates in order to avoid ‘problems’.
After fleeing a not-so-promising academic career and a disastrous attempt at being a bisexual activist, Shota is now a grumpy staff writer covering Georgia-related topics at OC Media. He focuses on nationalism, far-right movements, gender, and queer issues, with an eye on Eastern and Central Europe.
Georgia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has annulled the electoral lists of three of four opposition groups upon their request, leading the way to a possible one-party parliament in the country.
On Tuesday evening, the CEC said they had annulled the lists of the opposition groups the Coalition for Change, Unity – National Movement, and Strong Georgia, who all submitted requests to do so on Monday and Tuesday.
‘[This] parliament is not recognised by anyone, neither inside nor outside the
A prominent member of the For Georgia opposition party has reported that he was assaulted in the Tbilisi Metro on Wednesday evening.
Levan Gogichaishvili claimed that he was attacked by a group of up to 20 individuals who were ‘Bidzina Ivanishvili’s thugs’, speculating that they were rally goers returning from Georgian Dream’s last large campaign event in downtown Tbilisi that evening. He described them as visibly intoxicated and holding Georgian Dream flags.
Commenting on the incident,
The Lelo-led Strong Georgia alliance has announced that former Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili joined their coalition.
Lelo chair Mamuka Khazaradze announced that Margvelashvili joined their alliance at a pre-election event in Gori on Wednesday evening.
Margvelashvili was first reported to have been in talks to join Strong Georgia earlier in September, after Lelo’s secretary general, Irakli Kupradze, published a photo with the ex-president on Facebook.
‘There is only victory ahead
Five weeks before Georgia’s parliamentary elections, the For Georgia party, led by former Georgian Dream member and ex-Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia, announced that negotiations to join the Strong Georgia alliance had failed.
On 19 September, the opposition For Georgia party reported that the three-day long negotiations to create a unified bloc with the Strong Georgia alliance had faltered.
The announcement followed what appeared to be difficult negotiations between For Georgia’s chair, Gi
