This gathering also took place after the Constitutional Court, seized by the pro-Western president, decided to keep unchanged the result of the October legislative elections won by the ruling Georgian Dream party but contested by the opposition.
Demonstrations in Tbilisi, punctuated by violence, broke out on Thursday after the government announced the postponement until 2028 of this Caucasian country’s ambitions to join the European Union.
On Tuesday evening, protesters were still in the thousands, but slightly fewer than in previous days, throwing fireworks at parliament and police and waving flags of Georgia and the EU, journalists from the AFP.
Riot police responded first with a water hose, notably to push back demonstrators who attempted to scale the walls of parliament, then with a water cannon and tear gas as the crowd moved towards a nearby avenue.
The Ministry of the Interior accused in a press release demonstrators of having thrown “various types of blunt objects, pyrotechnic devices and flammable objects” at the police.
President Salomé Zourabichvili, who supports the protest movement, denounced on X a “disproportionate” use of force by the police, “mass arrests and mistreatment”.
“Better future”
A few hours earlier, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze had accused the opposition and NGOs of being behind the clashes with the police and warned that they “will not escape their responsibilities”.
His party, which claims not to give up on the EU despite the announcement of the postponement of negotiations, estimated that the dissatisfied Georgians had “misunderstood” and that European integration was “progressing”.
The day before, he had rejected any negotiations with the opposition, which is demanding new legislative elections by denouncing fraud during the October 26 vote, just like Brussels, which Mr. Kobakhidzé described as “blackmail”.
The Georgian Dream also attempts to present the protest movement as the result of external interference.
“No one pays us, we come here by our will, on our own,” a demonstrator, Nougo Chigvinadzé, a 41-year-old logistician, told AFP, who simply said he wanted “a better future for our children”.
“Everything our government says is a lie. They have been lying to us for twelve years and they continue to do so,” he added.
In mid-November, opposition groups and the president, breaking with the government but with limited powers, filed an appeal before the Constitutional Court to have the results of the October legislative vote annulled.
The Court, in a decision published Tuesday, refused this request, specifying that its verdict was final and without appeal.
According to the Interior Ministry, 293 demonstrators have been arrested since the start of the movement and 143 police officers have been injured. Demonstrators and journalists have also been injured in recent days.
The opposition accuses the government of wanting to get closer to Moscow, and of imitating its repressive and authoritarian methods.
“Unprecedented movement”
“Across Georgia, people are rising up against the Russian puppet regime,” President Salomé Zourabichvili greeted Monday evening, seeing it as “an unprecedented movement.”
This former French diplomat assured last week that she would refuse to give up her mandate as planned at the end of December and would remain in her post until new legislative elections are organized.
Although she has very limited powers, Ms. Zourabichvili is popular with protesters, whose movement, largely spontaneous and organized online, has neither a dominant political leader nor any real structure.
Every evening, the police want to chase the protesters from Parliament Square, the epicenter of the mobilization and tensions.
The Georgian Dream claims to want to avoid the country’s fate as Ukraine, which has been invaded by Russian troops for almost three years. Its officials accuse the West of wanting to drag Georgia into a war with Moscow.
The country nestled on the shores of the Black Sea remains traumatized by a brief war with Russia in the summer of 2008. Moscow then recognized the independence of two separatist regions bordering its territory, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. , where it still maintains a military presence.
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