As Democracy Falters Globally, Georgian Protest Mood Turns Somber
“The end of winter is near; the spring of the people is coming!” chant the protesters in Tbilisi streets. In Georgia, balmier days and burgeoning trees announce the arrival of spring. Yet, after a hundred days of nonstop street protest, the winter of Georgian discontent fails to bear fruit. While the core of protesters continues to turn up on Rustaveli Avenue and in some towns across the country, the mood fluctuates from morose resignation to dogged defiance. Victory, once pronounced as inevitable, now seems distant.
In the past days, a spy-thriller-style escape of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s estranged business partner, Giorgi Bachiashvili, captured media attention. But more ordinary citizens are saying they are leaving, too. Some left the apologetic posts to the protesters, saying financial and personal pressure got the better of them. In a spur of social media discussion that followed, some hailed and some scolded the defectors.
“There is nothing to reproach the people who are leaving. Nobody is obliged to live their one life in this idiocy,” wrote one commentator bitterly. Salome Samadashvili, of the opposition party Lelo, disagrees. “Everyone has the right to leave the country, politics, or activism; it is understandable. But I would advise them to leave à la française, quietly. Our society does not need demoralization.”
Yet, the objective reasons for demoralization are there: the protest has failed any of its stated goals so far. Scores of protesters remain jailed on trumped-up charges, facing lengthy prison sentences. Mzia Amaglobeli, a journalist arrested for slapping the police chief, stopped her hunger strike but is still in prison. There are no signs that the new parliamentary elections are on the horizon, and even if they were, with ever-tightening repressive legislation, few feel elections alone would change anything.
The promise of societal solidarity also did not materialize to the expected extent. While protesters mobilized to aid stranded residents of Guria, some were shocked to get little gratitude or sympathy for their cause. Protesting miners in Chiatura were quick to dissociate their grievances from those of Tbilisi, trying not to alienate the authorities they depended on.
Instead of supporting their students, as most professors have done in Serbia, the rectorate of Tbilisi’s top drama school has called in the police to hand in fines and dislodge the protesting students from the university grounds yesterday. The news came today that several were expelled. Social divisions and fear of government reprisals run deep.
Still, the January poll found that two-thirds of Georgians feel the country is moving in the wrong direction, and 78% blame the Georgian Dream for the crisis. 60% say they support the protests. Yet, almost 40% of the surveyed consider the current Georgian Dream government legitimate – a sign perhaps that a sizeable minority will willingly obey the repressive legislation being rubber-stamped almost daily. Others are likely to comply out of fear. Given the authorities’ determination to continue jailing and fining the few who continue to defy the ever-pervasive prohibitions publicly, many protesters feel they are unlikely to effect change. The international context makes things worse.
A rising tide sinks all the ships
The protests in Georgia always had a distinct geopolitical flavor. And while only a few trickled in to protest the flawed parliamentary elections on October 26 last year, the crowds swelled when the Georgian Dream leadership announced its decision to stray from the European path on October 28. Throughout the early weeks and months of the protests, one of the key axes of the civic and opposition political actors has been to deny the Georgian Dream its international legitimacy. In that, they have mostly succeeded – the European Parliament and the European Commission have issued a stern rebuke, and sanctions were applied by the EU, individual European countries, and, notably, the United States.
The Georgian Dream leadership made no secret of counting on Donald Trump’s election and inauguration in January 2025 to break the chains of isolation. This has not happened – at least not yet. The U.S. Senate and Congress are moving ahead with considering the MEGOBARI Act, a damning piece of legislation that would censure the Georgian Dream for its anti-democratic comportment.
However, the new U.S. administration has played into Georgian oligarchs’ favor in several important ways. First, it validated the Georgian Dream trope about the “liberal deep state” undermining global governance. Secondly, the pressure the White House put on Ukraine dovetails with two narratives of Georgia’s rulers: that Kyiv was acting as a proxy of the U.S. “deep state” and that it was ultimately foolish for the Ukrainian government to resist Moscow’s onslaught. GD PM Irakli Kobakhidze is now vaunting the level-headedness of his government for avoiding entering the international debate on Ukraine on the side of the Western consensus.
More crucially, the culling of USAID left many of Georgia’s civil society actors reeling. Most programs that supported civil society engagement with governance are now shuttered. An estimated 2,000 highly qualified Georgians are jobless. The fines they get almost daily from the police “for closing traffic” will feel much more painful to them. The toxic discourse about NGOs from the White House and the ridicule of USAID programs are music to the years of the Georgian Dream, which has been singing to that tune for years.
America’s seeming defection from its battlefield ally – Ukraine – and from its mission to support democratic actors is a brutal brunt to bear for many Georgian protest actors, who considered an alliance of the Georgian pro-democratic forces with the U.S. a cornerstone of their worldview.
“Remember when Washington was on our side?” quipped Georgia’s former deputy foreign minister Thornike Gordadze, who posted the gallery with old pictures side-by-side with the U.S. foreign policy dignitaries. President Salome Zurabishvili condemned the Oval Office debacle with President Zelenskyy by posting that it “looks more like America seconding Putin’s Russia.” But some hold a different view: “We shall have the courage to admit that whoever sits in the White House, Georgia’s sovereignty cannot survive without the U.S.,” wrote Tamara Chergoleishvili of The Federalists, a newly forged staunchly pro-U.S. party. She berates the opposition for “panicking” over Trump’s policies, which she and her colleagues hope will eventually be tempered by the institutions.
Checkered balance sheet
All of this leaves Georgia’s future uncertain and its protesters confused. The movement’s lack of political leadership, once hailed as a boon for maximizing its reach, is now proving a liability. Protests have not translated their momentum into tangible political messages and actions. After leaving office, Salome Zurabishvili episodically serves to remind Europe and the U.S. of Georgians’ demands. But the attention in Washington D.C. and the European capitals is now elsewhere. All she can offer the protesters is a promise of the new election and a rallying cry. But how to get there, and whether that has the potential to alter Georgia’s fall into authoritarianism, remains unclear.
On the positive side, the daily protests helped crystallize some political groups around common agendas. At least two movements have consolidated as political parties – the Social Democratic Movement and the more centrist Freedom Square. Civil servants have created professional unions. Some civil society organizations, previously criticized for being too insular, have reached wider audiences. Citizen-funded initiatives have proliferated online, involving the diaspora financially and personally to support their preferred actions.
The progress is real but very fragile. Yet this wave of civic mobilization has the potential of being more determined, as it is being forged under pressure rather than in greenhouse conditions. The European Union has not recognized the legitimacy of the current government and is holding out for signs of its change of behavior.
On the negative side of the balance sheet, the ruling party has succeeded in largely demobilizing students: through fines and arrests, mostly, but also as professors and faculties failed to mobilize sufficiently behind them. The business community remains cautious and increasingly fearful of supporting the protests. Their fear of financial and banking sanctions seems to outweigh some of their support for the protesters’ demands. The European Union is short of tools (including financial), attention span, and determination to make their support count.
Will the winter of discontent turn into the spring of the nation? For now, Georgia’s resistance is suspended in limbo and the protesters’ resilience is stretched thin.