TBILISI, October 23 – A veteran opposition figure in Georgia says the country’s most powerful political patron is tightening control and humiliating formerly loyal lieutenants in public view.
Roman Gotsiridze, a former member of parliament for the National Movement, used a Thursday interview to paint Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of the ruling Georgian Dream movement, as a man intent on absolute loyalty and punishing perceived defectors. He framed the recent steps taken against ex–prime minister Irakli Garibashvili and former State Security Service (SSS) head Grigol Liluashvili as part of that project.
Gotsiridze’s core argument is that the system now revolves around one figure, and anyone who drifts risks being made an example. He claimed Ivanishvili wants to create a closed stronghold, and used a stark metaphor to make the point: “Ivanishvili wants to create a locked fortress where everyone will follow him to his grave. Just like when a pharaoh died, they would take their beloved dog, horse, cat, and in some tribes, even family members with them!”
According to Gotsiridze, the public pressure on Garibashvili and Liluashvili serves two purposes. First, he says, it is personal payback fueled by fears that former insiders might cooperate with the United States. Second, he casts it as a classic authoritarian playbook: naming external enemies, hunting “agents,” and consolidating power at home by fostering a siege mentality. The way he sees it, these themes “have been methodically unfolding” for several years.
He also argued that the message to the public is corrosive, that every top official in recent years was either corrupt or a traitor, and that such messaging is designed to elevate one leader while discrediting all others. In the interview, Gotsiridze alleged that Ivanishvili is “morally destroying” Garibashvili and sees disobedience as betrayal after years of patronage. He went so far as to describe a ritual of enforced loyalty, saying the demand is to stand beside the leader through sanctions or worse. “Two things can be read in Ivanishvili’s actions… The goal is domestic terror… The consolidation of domestic power,” he said, connecting it to “international isolation” rhetoric and a search for enemies “inside and out.”
Gotsiridze also revived his long-running comparison with the fall of another former prime minister, Giorgi Kvirikashvili, casting that 2018 exit as punishment for being well-received in Washington and pushing the Anaklia deep-sea port, an interpretation he says fits a pattern of suppressing independent centers of influence. He argued the same suspicion now hangs over Liluashvili, whom he described as holding “huge information” about the ruling circle.
The former lawmaker further claimed the public display of cash and jewelry seized in recent operations was a calculated choice, even if it carried reputational risk, because it reinforced the narrative of a single uncompromising leader battling enemies. “Ivanishvili is creating a regime where everyone becomes his soldiers,” he said.
Gotsiridze, a former parliamentarian for the UNM party, which ruled Georgia under its President Saakashvili from 2004 to 2012, spoke on PalitraNews’s “Midday Newsroom” program. His remarks comes at the end of a week with highly charged rhetoric in Tbilisi, where the political standoff between the government and its domestic opponents, including UNM, continues to spill into the streets and onto the airwaves, while international observers are trying to assess whose version of events is the right one.
PalitraNews’s interview was published without a response from either Georgian Dream or Ivanishvili’s representatives, and did not include a government rebuttal to Gotsiridze’s allegations.
