The opposition parties Lelo/Strong Georgia and the United National Movement (UNM) said they are filing separate lawsuits against the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party in the Constitutional Court after the government appealed to ban major opposition forces, including the two.
Lelo filed its lawsuit on October 27, arguing that the Georgian Dream-dominated parliament’s law banning political activity for certain individuals and parties violates the Georgian Constitution and international conventions.
Giorgi Sioridze, who submitted the lawsuit, said the appeal provides “a complete legal justification for the unconstitutionality of the norms adopted by Georgian Dream recently,” presumably referring to the October 16 legislation that would strip individuals “associated” with parties declared unconstitutional of their passive voting rights.
“These laws are legal nonsense,” Sioridze said. “They contradict all international standards […] and, most importantly, Georgia’s Constitution, including the very version adopted under Georgian Dream, which grants minimal powers to the Constitutional Court regarding political party bans and does not allow restrictions on individual political activity.”
The UNM announced a similar move on November 10. Party member Levan Bezhashvili said that although the UNM “has no faith in Georgian Dream’s Constitutional Court, which has been captured,” it would still file an appeal “at the request of our international partners and the legal community, because this process will be crucial in later proceedings at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.”
According to him, the party will file lawsuits in three stages. He said the first lawsuit has already been submitted against the concluding report of the Georgian Dream–led parliamentary commission of inquiry, chaired by GD veteran Tea Tsulukiani. Next, the party plans to challenge the laws banning political parties, and finally, it will file a lawsuit directly against Georgian Dream.
In a similar move, jailed Coalition for Change leader Nika Gvaramia wrote on October 29 that he plans to “personally participate in the Constitutional Court proceedings” related to the appeal filed by Georgian Dream.
The opposition’s appeals follow Georgian Dream’s own Constitutional lawsuit. On October 28, the ruling party said it would submit a case to the Constitutional Court seeking to ban three major opposition parties – the UNM, Ahali/Coalition for Change, and Lelo/Strong Georgia – while warning that smaller groups “closely related” to them, including Droa, Girchi-More Freedom, Strategy Aghmashenebeli, European Georgia, the Federalists, and the Republicans, could face similar action.
According to Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili, who presented the appeal during an October 28 briefing, the move will not affect “associated individuals” of the parties deemed unconstitutional. However, the recent legislative amendments allow such actions.
GD’s Constitutional lawsuit also spares former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia’s opposition For Georgia party, whose members took their seats in the disputed parliament after a year-long boycott.
The appeal is based on a voluminous report by the Tsulukiani Commission, which examined alleged crimes committed by former officials.
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