The Daily Beat: 8 January

Welcome back, and a Happy New Year to all readers.

Georgia celebrated Orthodox Christmas on Sunday, marking the end of the New Year and Christmas holidays. Political life will be revived slowly but surely as the country is heading to the 2024 parliamentary elections in October.

Traditionally, Georgian Patriarch Ilia II issued an annual Christmas epistle focusing on regional conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, growing faithlessness, and the challenges posed by artificial intelligence. The epistle also mentioned the crucial importance of maintaining peace in such volatile times.

While Georgians were celebrating Orthodox Christmas, a former opposition politician and researcher at Soviet Laboratory, Giorgi Kandelaki, revealed that the icon depicting inglorious soviet dictator Joseph Stalin decorates one of the walls of Tbilisi Trinity Cathedral. Later, the head of the Patriarchate’s PR unit, Andria Jgamadze, admitted the existence of the icon, saying that the allegation over the icon depicting Stalin was a pure provocation to mar Christmas celebrations.

In a Facebook video posted on the evening of January 7th, Irma Inashvili, the leader of the pro-Russian party “Alliance of Patriots,” claimed that she had donated to the Trinity Cathedral an icon of the Russian Saint Matrona which also depicts Joseph Stalin. According to Irma Inashvili, during the World War II, Joseph Stalin turned to Saint Matrona for help in his war efforts against Nazi Germany. That’s a pretty “solid” explanation for the donation and further decoration of Tbilisi Trinity Cathedral with Stalin’s image.

The ruling Georgian Dream party updated its statute, laying the comfortable ground for Bidzina Ivanishvili’s political return. The revised party statute introduces the position of honorary party chairman, who also becomes the party’s principal political adviser and nominates the Prime Minister’s candidature for further approval by the party’s political council. Besides all that, the party’s honorary chairman is entitled to convene extraordinary party conferences and take a seat in the party’s political council. Well, it appears gone are the days of “informal rule” as Ivanishvili formalizes his grip over the ruling party he founded 13 years ago.

Driven by Ivanishvili’s possible bid for the President’s position, former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s opposition party “For Georgia” has put forward an initiative to reintroduce the direct election of the President by universal suffrage, saying it is necessary to ensure the legitimacy and independence of the institution. Other opposition leaders also expressed suspicions that Ivanishvili is eyeing an easily accessible President’s office since the next president will be elected by the electoral college, consisting of MPs and supreme representatives of the Autonomous Republics of Abkhazia and Ajara, where Ivanishvili has a majority.