Three Georgian opposition parties to unite ahead of elections

Three Georgian opposition groups — Lelo, Anna Dolidze’s For the People party, and the newly established Freedom Square — have announced they will unite ahead of October’s parliamentary elections.

The three groups announced their coalition on Wednesday.

Lelo, established by TBC Bank Group founder Mamuka Khazaradze in 2019, has been attempting to position itself as a new political centre for voters and parties dissatisfied with both the ruling Georgian Dream party and the formerly ruling United National Movement (UNM).

They will be joined by Anna Dolidze-led left-leaning For the People party, and Freedom Square, a newly established political group primarily composed of individuals with no prior political affiliation.

The announcement came a week after three other opposition groups, Ahali, Droa, and Girchi — More Freedom, whose leaders have all previously been affiliated with the UNM — formed their own electoral coalition. 

[Read more: Three Georgian opposition parties unite ahead of election]

Khazaradze formed Lelo on the eve of the 2020 elections, shortly after accusing the government of pressuring the Anaklia Development Consortium, which he led, into sabotaging its role in the Anaklia Deep Sea Port Project on Georgia’s Black Sea coast. 

The project has since been on hold, with the government recently revealing plans to involve a Singaporean–Chinese company in its development.

Lelo is among the pro-Western parties that recently pledged to grant President Salome Zourabichvili the authority to select the next government, provided the opposition groups prevent Georgian Dream from winning a majority this autumn.

Anna Dolidze, a popular figure in Georgia’s opposition, founded For the People in 2021. A Cornell Law School alum, Dolidze was a long-time critic of former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government. 

She briefly served as a deputy to Georgia’s first woman Defence Minister, Tinatin Khidasheli, before joining President Giorgi Margvelashvili’s office in 2016. Over time, both Dolidze and Margvelashvili became increasingly disillusioned with the Georgian Dream-led government, particularly due to their belief that the ruling party had grown too close to the judges Dolidze had criticised earlier in her career as a human rights defender.

For the People stands out as distinctively left-leaning in a predominantly centre-right pro-Western political landscape. Dolidze has previously backed a campaign to regulate the gambling industry in an effort to combat gambling addiction and has criticised the trial of hostage-taker Levan Zurabashvili, denouncing it as an instance of ‘selective justice’.

Dolidze’s criticism of Georgia’s judiciary and the overrepresentation of former associates of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in the government align with the political agenda of major liberal groups. 

Additionally, Dolidze appears to align with President Zourabichvili, who also garnered popularity after becoming an outspoken critic of her erstwhile ally Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream.

Freedom Square has yet to participate in any elections having only been established earlier this month by Levan Tsutskiridze, the executive director of the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy, a watchdog group. He is known for being one of the leaders of the latest wave of protests against the controversial foreign agent law.

Tsutskiridze has sought to attract individuals with strong professional backgrounds but minimal political baggage to join Freedom Square.

Read in Armenian on CivilNet.