“Georgian Dream” Usurps Power

By moving to recognize the credentials of the MPs elected in fraudulent October 26 elections, the Georgian Dream has seized power and plunged the country into a combined constitutional, political, and existential crisis. It did so with premeditation and in full knowledge of the potential consequences.

The constitutional elements of the development are not insignificant. The President challenged the election results in the Constitutional Court, and the law is clear—or so the leading Georgian constitutionalists claim—that the credentials of the elected MPs can not be recognized until the court has ruled. Georgians know that in its drive to capture the state institutions, the ruling party also put that Court under its thumb – a frivolous suit to demand the President’s impeachment and the public travesty of the debate over the constitutionality of the Foreign Agents’ law have confirmed that. Yet, the fact that, in this case, the Georgian Dream has decided to avoid even a formal nod from the Constitutional Court confirms its determination to tear up the legal and constitutional order.

This does not come as a surprise – in fact, the Georgian Dream has campaigned on the premise that it needs the constitutional majority to do just that – change the principles of the constitution to make it illiberal, in other words, abolish the primacy of individual and minority rights in favor of the “diktat by the majority.” With state institutions captured and political power usurped, we all know who decides what the purported will of the majority would be: the ruling party clique responding to the whims of its patron – Bidzina Ivanishvili.

This reality is at the heart of the political crisis. Some argue that there is no political crisis in the classic sense: the opposition, battered by the courts and a repressive state, is weak and short of public trust. The President’s mandate is about to expire, and the ruling party promised to install an entirely subservient figurehead instead. Yet, the political crisis is there nonetheless because – despite the firehose of propaganda – too many Georgians know they did not vote for the Georgian Dream to continue to govern. Whether this discontent will mount as a wave or remains a grumble, the political system will remain fundamentally and critically short of popular legitimacy. What is more, the usurpation of power puts Georgia firmly outside the once-coveted political alliance with Europe and the United States and thus fully at the mercy of a regional power competition, where there are few established ground rules and where Russia has the most credible claim to absorb its former backyard.

And this is at the center of Georgia’s existential crisis: the ruling party has ignored the declared will of the majority of Georgians to progress toward Europe and substituted that will with the purported political and geopolitical genius of one wealthy man with debts to Russia, Ivanishvili. The erosion of legitimacy and the subordination of state institutions to the ruling party has corrupted the vital security institutions, whose attention has been diverted to rigging elections and suppressing the opposition.

Georgia thus finds itself alone and vulnerable, without partners or legitimate government, at the mercy of an aggressive neighbor. This is a challenge it may not be ready to meet.

Also read:

• 13/05/2022 Editorial | Pawning the Country
• 12/07/2021 Georgia Lurches Towards Illiberalism
• 23/02/2021  Editorial | Time to Pull the Handbrake
• 21/11/2019  Illiberal Oligarchy Lurks Behind Georgia’s Democratic Façade