On January 29, the Georgian Dream party announced it would halt its participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), following the body’s overwhelming passage of a resolution urging Georgia to schedule new parliamentary elections. The resolution passed by a vote of 114 to 13.
Thea Tsulukiani, head of the Georgian delegation, described the resolution’s terms as “unacceptable, unfair, and unfounded,” and declared the move in response. The resolution demands that Georgian authorities set a date for new elections by April, free all political prisoners, and revise controversial laws. These demands align with the goals of ongoing pro-European protests in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, and beyond.
Tsulukiani criticized the call for new elections, asserting it undermines Georgia’s sovereignty and disregards the will of over 1.1 million voters who supported Georgian Dream. “To accept this resolution would be a betrayal of our electorate and, by extension, of the majority of Georgian society,” she stated. As a result, she confirmed that the Georgian parliamentary delegation would cease its activities in PACE immediately.
The resolution was met with sharp criticism from PACE members, including Latvian MP Zanda Kalniņa-Lukasevica, who spoke out against what she described as a rollback of democratic principles in Georgia. This criticism follows the controversial election of Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former soccer player with right-wing populist leanings, as Georgia’s new president. His election occurred despite widespread allegations of fraud and manipulation in the October parliamentary elections, which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted were marred by vote-buying, violence, and intimidation.
Protests erupted in response to Georgian Dream’s electoral victory, particularly after the government’s decision to delay talks on the country’s EU accession. The protests escalated in November, leading to a violent crackdown by authorities, including mass arrests and surveillance of demonstrators using Chinese-made facial recognition cameras.
The PACE resolution also stresses the importance of an inclusive dialogue involving all political actors in Georgia to address the flaws in the recent parliamentary elections. It calls for creating an electoral environment that supports genuinely democratic elections, which should be scheduled in the coming months.
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