Dispatch – February 12: Aquarius Season

77 days of protests – wins and loses on Ivanishvili vs Protests frontline

The latest wave of pro-EU, anti-autocracy protests in Georgia has been going on for 77 days, and one of the things that keeps the resistance alive is imaginary deadlines. Previously, it was January 20, the inauguration of President Trump in the U.S., which Georgian Dream leaders hoped would turn things in their favor. While Mr. Trump has yet to profess his love for Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder, the weeks since have indeed seemed to favor the oligarch. The next deadline is February 18, Ivanishvili’s birthday, and the date by which, according to rumors whose origins we couldn’t trace, the oligarch wants protests to be crushed. 

It could be more than a coincidence that both dates – January 20 and February 18 – fall at the beginning and end of the astrological season of Aquarius. Ivanishvili is known to “believe in such things,” and the fellow Aquarian oligarch may have hoped that the stars would be especially supportive of him in his season (though there are still esoteric concepts that Ivanishvili chooses to ignore. Like karma). If the oligarch has indeed consulted the stars, the celestial bodies must have been aware of the lonely man’s aversion to hearing truths that don’t suit him. Because they certainly didn’t tell him one crucial detail: the rebellious sign of Aquarius protects not only its own eccentric children but resistance itself, too.

Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter with a weekly horoscope update on how the ongoing protests against the increasingly repressive Georgian Dream government are faring.

What’s the worst part of waking up every morning to see if you’ve been outlawed by the Georgian Dream or abolished by the Trump administration?

Waking up.

That’s how the world lives now, and that’s how Georgia lives. In the past weeks, the Georgian Dream went on a fresh, ruthless offensive, serving the opposition a cocktail of fines, new repressive laws, arrests, convictions, and a growing police mobilization to push demonstrators out of the remaining protest spaces. The dominant reaction well into the first week of February was that of despair. Social media was flooded with long, bitter texts, some shaming “those who remain silent,” others warning the ignorant that the regime would soon be knocking on their doors, some lecturing about the failure to learn from the past, and others lamenting the moral decline of their fellow citizens.

The situation is indeed dire. Dozens remain in jail on protest-related criminal charges, and dozens are served daily with $1800 fines for standing on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue as assembly laws have been tightened month by month. Since the spring of 2023, the total sum of protest-related fines has exceeded $200,000, but the amount could grow exponentially as both the size and application of fines have since increased drastically.

High-quality facial-recognition cameras seem to be (literally?) growing on trees at this point, contributing to a widespread sense of being watched. Those in the civil service report politically motivated dismissals. A somewhat mismanaged February 2 highway rally added to general apathy, and past weeks’ protests, while non-stop, have largely struggled to keep up with the scale of those in December.

With the gloom comes a new level of psychological abuse, often directed at the victims. In recent days, for example, Georgian Dream propagandists circulated an image on Facebook to mock Mzia Amaglobeli, the imprisoned journalist who’s been on hunger strike for a month. The image, meant to diminish the journalist’s pains, showed Amaglobeli’s head photoshopped onto the emaciated body of jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, from a time when the latter was also on hunger strike.

The sight of the country’s most respected teachers, musicians, and other professionals in courtrooms was another morale killer, and the rising trend of misogynistic behavior by police served to further intimidate women who dared to speak out. Worrying parents of jailed young activists have come under more stress, having also faced heavy administrative fines for taking part in protests. To the outrage added a new gaslighting trend, including a GD MP downplaying a life-threatening police attack on a journalist as a “sad incident,” while administrative proceedings were launched against another reporter who was also severely beaten by police.

Confidence Shocks

The initial shock, however, slowly wore off, giving way to more rational considerations about why “bad” didn’t yet mean the end.

While some activists repeatedly worried that the daily gatherings on Rustaveli Avenue are making little difference, the Georgian Dream government still seems desperate to end them. The non-stop rallies, whether in Tbilisi or other Georgian cities, appear to have succeeded in keeping the resistance – and with it, the sense of crisis – alive. The latest ISSA poll showed that some 82% of respondents agreed that the country was in a state of crisis, and 78% held Georgian Dream responsible. Nearly 60% of respondents supported the ongoing protests, with 45% identifying themselves as active supporters (read more here).

The crisis is indeed hard to ignore. Life here has come to a standstill, even if it might not be that obvious when walking down a suburban street in Tbilisi on a sunny afternoon. Businesses in the tourism and construction sectors have reported a drop in demand. New mortgages and spending on non-essential goods are also down, as Georgian citizens seem to be bracing for the worst. The U.S. aid freeze could affect hundreds to thousands of local jobs if it’s not reversed. Six trade unions have joined forces to launch labor action against public agencies over politically motivated dismissals.

The effects are not yet dramatic. The exchange rate of the Lari, Georgia’s national currency, has not deviated drastically from its pre-crisis level despite sharp fluctuations in recent months. However, the economy may continue to suffer a negative “confidence shock” due to uncertainty as the crisis progresses. GD leaders have promised large investment projects from the Gulf countries in tourism and development, but it remains unclear whether Eastern investors will remain interested amid domestic turmoil and Georgia’s Western isolation.

And, importantly, the crisis is putting more pressure on the bureaucracy in charge: the growing number of administrative cases against protesters has overloaded the courts, prompting the GD to change the law to require the police to issue fines themselves. However, activists and lawyers quickly found out that the new procedure also allowed for further bureaucratic warfare. Fines can be appealed at three levels – from the Ministry of the Interior to local and appellate courts – giving protesters months before payment is due.

And the physical resources of the police, who have been deployed in large numbers, may have their limits: “We haven’t even eaten, ma’am,” one officer angrily complained to a woman who apparently confronted him about his colleagues showing up to work drunk the other day, possibly inspired by the circulating video of staggering cops from days earlier.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring

Just because the oppressive regime is shaking doesn’t mean it is breaking. The bad news about autocracies around the world is that they have shown an ability to adapt to political and economic shocks. But the weaknesses that the GD government occasionally shows are helping those in the resistance overcome debilitating apathy.

The failure of the massive police effort to prevent protesters from blocking Rustaveli Avenue on February 10 served as a major moral boost for Georgian activists. The daily blockade of Tbilisi’s main avenue has served as a symbol of the prevailing resistance, and the threat of losing it only brought more people into the streets the next day.

When Lado Apkhazava, the first winner of the National Teacher’s Award in 2017, was ordered by the court to pay GEL 5,000 for protesting near the judge’s house, thousands of his colleagues banded together to crowdfund the fine, in a rare show of solidarity among a professional group that is arguably one of the most vulnerable to pressure from the ruling party.

And the intensified crackdown on freedom of assembly has prompted protesters to plan ahead to bring back mass rallies. Three gatherings – now commonly known as “big rallies” – have been announced for February 18 (Ivanishvili’s birthday), February 25 (the 104th anniversary of the Soviet occupation of Georgia), and March 7 (the 100th day of the current non-stop protests).

The protesters remain determined to survive the Aquarius season, the winter, and, if the stars allow it, the dictatorship.