Georgia | Police fire tear gas at pro-EU protesters

(Tbilisi) Georgian police used tear gas and water cannons during the night from Thursday to Friday to try to disperse demonstrators who were protesting against the government’s decision to delay negotiations to join the European Union until 2028.

A month after the legislative elections won by the ruling Georgian Dream party and denounced by the opposition as tainted by irregularities, thousands of people gathered in Tbilisi and other cities in Georgia.

In the capital, demonstrators waved flags of the European Union and Georgia and blocked traffic in front of the Parliament and the headquarters of the Georgian Dream, which they accuse of pro-Russian authoritarian drift.

Shortly after midnight, riot police fired tear gas against demonstrators, AFP journalists noted on site. Masked agents later fired rubber bullets in their direction and beat protesters and journalists present.

Opposite, demonstrators erected barricades which they set on fire.

Local media reported several arrests.

Pro-Western President Salomé Zourabichvili, breaking with the government, gave her support on

Georgia has been going through a period of political turbulence since the contested victory of the Georgian Dream in the legislative elections at the end of October.

“The Georgian Dream did not win the elections, it staged a coup. There is no parliament or legitimate government in Georgia,” said Chota Sabachvili, a 20-year-old protester. “We will not let this self-proclaimed prime minister destroy our European future.”

On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution rejecting the election results, denouncing “significant irregularities”. The text demands that a new election be organized within a year under international supervision and that sanctions be taken against senior Georgian officials, including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.

” Blackmail ”

In response, the latter, in office since February and confirmed Thursday by MEPs, accused the European Parliament and “certain European politicians” of “blackmail”.

“We have decided not to put the question of membership of the European Union on the agenda before the end of 2028,” he announced.

However, he pledged to continue implementing the necessary reforms, ensuring that “by 2028, Georgia will be better prepared than any other candidate country to open accession negotiations with Brussels and become a member state in 2030”.

A former Soviet republic, Georgia officially obtained candidate status for membership in December 2023, but Brussels has since frozen the process, accusing the Georgian Dream government of carrying out a serious democratic setback.

The president declared the new Parliament “unconstitutional”, while awaiting a response to her request to the Constitutional Court to annul the results of the legislative elections, which is unlikely to succeed.

Following Mr. Kobakhidze’s statements, the president, who has only limited powers in Georgia, organized an “emergency meeting” with foreign diplomats.

“Today, the illegitimate government has declared war on its own people,” she said during a press conference alongside opposition leaders. “I am the only legitimate institution, the only legitimate representative of this country,” she assured.

The president’s refusal to validate the new Parliament and the opposition’s boycott are fueling a crisis of legitimacy for the institution.

One of the authors of the Georgian Constitution, Vakhtang Khmaladze, told AFP that “with democratic institutions having disappeared, the Georgian state is facing an existential crisis”.

The Prime Minister, who already criticized the EU and the United States for wanting to drag Georgia into the war between Russia and Ukraine, asked Thursday, in front of the deputies, that Brussels “respect our national interests and our values traditional”.

Mr. Kobakhidze is considered a loyalist of the powerful billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the Georgian Dream and accused by his detractors of pulling the strings of national politics.