in Tbilisi, a requiem for democracy

A funeral for democracy. This is the atmosphere that reigned this Monday around Parliament, on the occasion of the inaugural session of the eleventh legislature of independent Georgia. A session in which only the 89 deputies of the party in power since 2012, the Georgian Dream of the pro-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, took part, the 61 parliamentarians of the four opposition parties having renounced their mandate due to the massive fraud which marked the election of October 26.

At noon, as the session opened, no more than a thousand demonstrators occupied the area around the building, where a few tents had been pitched the day before. On Rustaveli Avenue, the central artery of the Georgian capital, small groups wandered in a cold drizzle while the screams of a siren echoed accompanied by a mechanical voice parodying calls over the police loudspeaker: “ Police officers, disperse in order. Born…