Georgia’s ruling party has filed a lawsuit with the Constitutional Court, asking it to outlaw three of the country’s main opposition parties. If the court agrees, it could leave hundreds of thousands of Georgians without a political alternative, and end what’s left of pluralism in the country’s politics, according to Sandro Baramidze, a representative of Transparency International Georgia.
In a TV interview with Palitra News, he said the lawsuit “has no legal ground” because it relies entirely on the findings of a temporary parliamentary commission that, according to him, was “illegally formed.” He argued that the Tsulukiani Commission was dominated by the ruling party and that, by law, at least half of its members should have come from opposition ranks. But when the commission was created, the opposition had boycotted parliament, making such balance impossible.
“The commission was created in violation of the constitution and parliamentary rules,” Baramidze said. “Those factions calling themselves People’s Power and European Socialists were actually formed by members elected from the Georgian Dream list, so they could not legally constitute separate factions.”
That same commission, led by Culture Minister Thea Tsulukiani, accused opposition parties of undermining the state by allegedly sharing information with foreign governments, an accusation strongly rejected by the opposition as fabricated. It is this report that the ruling party’s lawmakers used as the foundation for their court filing, seeking to have the opposition parties banned.
Baramidze warned that such a move would spell disaster for Georgia’s democracy. If the Constitutional Court accepts the case and rules in favor of the government, he said, it would not only remove three major parties from political life but also allow future bans on any new party that resembles them. “That would mean the end of political pluralism,” he said, adding that banning these parties would also effectively silence roughly 700,000 voters who supported them in the 2024 parliamentary elections.
