Has the leading demand of the Georgian resistance outlived its purpose?
“Fire to the oligarchy!” – Heart goes racing as protesters chant…
“No justice, no peace!” – Blood rushes through the veins…
“Spring of the people is near!” – Fever, excitement…
“Police everywhere, justice nowhere!” – Mind is filling with rage…
“Overthrow the regime! Freedom for the prisoners!” – Goosebumps…
“Side by side! Side by side! We’ll take back justice!” – Endorphin rush…
“We won’t stop!” – the body is shaking with joy…
… “Schedule elections!” – Unexplained confusion… “Schedule elections!” – traumatic flashbacks… “Elections!” – Something is breaking inside. Void. Darkness.
Here is Nini and the Dispatch Newsletter to tell about the struggle of Georgian protesters to come up with the right demands.
If the promised “spring of the people” has arrived in Georgia, you can’t tell from the current weather. The streets of Tbilisi aren’t filled with people either, nor are they overwhelmed by intense clashes as they were during the last two springs. And despite the national team’s convincing victories over Armenia, the football excitement is not what it used to be. Want to know if something is truly changing in the Georgian resistance? Look for magic words.
I first heard one of those magic words – “Ga-da-de-ki” (Georgian: step down!) – explicitly chanted some ten days ago. It was during a small but lively march from the parliament to the public broadcaster’s office in support of Theater University students who faced expulsion. The march was led by teenage activists (whom I remember someone once aptly referring to as Gavroches), two flagbearers, and two or three fierce riot dogs. The “Gadadeki” chant appeared suddenly, out of nowhere, and was recited by the crowd several times before they switched to other, more common chants.
The demand (“the government must resign”) later reappeared on the wall of the parliament, written on a hanging whiteboard near the infamous metal fence where a group of students recently began their night-long non-stop protest.
The word is as old as the country’s history of protest. If you’d stopped a Georgian on the street ten years ago and asked him to name a single protest word, it would probably be Gadadeki. But this simple and powerful term has slowly been pushed out of the protest discourse over the past years. It must be thus strange that it’s the younger protesters with shorter political memory who are resurrecting the ancient demand. Could they be free from the over-education and overthinking that have robbed politics of its simplicity and directness?
You asked for it
It’s not easy to get one clear answer on why “new elections” have become one of the main demands of the ongoing resistance. But somehow, after tens of thousands of people poured into the streets in late November to launch the largest protest wave in decades, Georgians ended up demanding one thing that has traumatized them the most.
If you’ve spent the last five years in Georgia, lived through three “big” or “crucial” elections, and want to live through another one as soon as possible, you’re probably a printing company that gets rich by supplying ballot papers. Then, too, you might not be getting that offer anymore after last year’s marker-leaking controversy. Otherwise, the only emotion the word “elections” should evoke in an average liberal pro-Western Georgian citizen must be that of trauma or frustration.
Every vote since 2020 has started with great hopes and ended with great disappointments (and crises). All each vote has taught us is that the ruling Georgian Dream has created an ever-growing monster by capturing institutions and exploiting them for its vote-buying, vote-rigging, and intimidation schemes. With each election, the opposition parties that were expected to challenge this asymmetrical dominance have failed to live up to expectations. And now those parties have also increasingly disappeared from the protest scene: the only big move on their record in recent weeks was the unexplained urge to bring an unsolicited large screen to a rainy Rustaveli Avenue to broadcast the Armenia-Georgia football match. Activists were secretly happy when police got in the way.
Elections under the increasingly authoritarian rule have been unfair and unfree, and yet, we are asking for more. The hope is that should the Georgian Dream back down in the face of protests, it will also agree that the new vote should be better run and internationally supervised. But even if it is better managed, it will only cut off one of the many heads of the GD monster. In fact, new heads might have grown with the repressive laws and actions of the past few months, making it harder even for the internationally supervised vote to free citizens from deeply ingrained fears of retribution. International involvement may also be insufficient to fully deal with the asymmetry in financial or informational resources that the Georgian Dream and its billionaire leader possess.
Words do matter
The demand for “new elections” was hardly the result of any long, consistent public debate. As with many other political issues in Georgia, there was a sense of trusting the process because someone else (who?) obviously knew better and had thought it through. But various arguments have sporadically circulated to support the current demand.
The protests followed closely on the heels of disputed elections and concerns of mass fraud. Georgian Dream overturning the public consensus by announcing the halting of the EU accession on November 28 only strengthened the “revote” argument. The ruling party’s desperation not to grant the demand seemed to confirm that GD wasn’t playing fair and wasn’t sure of its chances in case of a re-run. The “new elections” demand also created a constructive, coherent process that would attract both domestic and international confidence, unlike Gadadeki where it was unclear who it was even addressed to: to those holding formal government positions, like Irakli Kobakhidze? Or to those with actual power, like Georgian Dream “honorary chairman” Bidzina Ivanishvili?
Non-stop protests, even with the dwindling turnout, kept putting pressure on the GD government and shoring up international solidarity. And while skepticism grows, the authorities still seem desperate enough to deploy all their resources to crush the resistance.
And anyway, should every political discontent automatically turn into a revolutionary scenario? Haven’t we outgrown that phase? Doesn’t the Gadadeki demand logically end in the same new elections?
Perhaps, but words do matter. Hardly anyone who has ever shouted Gadadeki had an electoral re-run in mind. The word is quietly but increasingly being considered in smaller activist discussions, with the obvious understanding that it means something radically different from previous demands. The term is more synonymous with Tsadi – another magic word translated as “leave” (and never come back) – than with any complex electoral process. Some believe that shouting Tsadi could bring fire back to the current resistance, but recent practices also show that shouting Tsadi too loud could easily land you in jail.
Democracy paradox
If Tsadi is risky, the New Elections demand is increasingly unviable. It lacks the straightforwardness needed to bring people out onto the streets in the hope that something will actually change. And as time passes, it also adds to the temptation for the opposition to run in this fall’s local elections. Georgian Dream has dared its opponents to test their forces in the upcoming municipal vote, but there are legitimate fears that a possible defeat in the unequal and unfair battle will put the final nail in the coffin of the resistance. The same risks lie with “new elections,” too, should GD still hold power during the revote.
Ultimately, whether Georgian protesters will continue to ask for new elections or move on to more radical demands also depends on one’s understanding of democracy. In recent months, the ruling party has become increasingly repressive, depriving citizens of their basic human rights to liberty, health, work, assembly, finance, or speech. The party will most likely only promise more repression in future election campaigns while disregarding basic constitutional principles.
So, does the call for a new election imply that a vote – fair or not – can legitimize oppression? Should it be decided by a simple majority whether one still deserves to be treated as a human being? Should you quietly accept it if 51% of the voters decide – willingly or under pressure – to sacrifice your entire existence for a vague populist agenda? Do you willingly show up for your public execution simply because the majority said so?
Or are our most basic individual human rights rather something to be protected and fought for at all costs and by all means? With bare hands if that’s what it takes?