Georgian court opens hearings on government bid to ban five opposition parties
Georgia's Constitutional Court has begun three days of hearings on a government bid to ban the five main opposition parties outright.
TBILISI — Georgia’s Constitutional Court in Batumi opened hearings on Wednesday in a government lawsuit seeking outright bans on the country’s five main opposition parties, a move civil society groups say presages the beginning of one-party rule in the South Caucasus country (Reuters; via The Straits Times).
The court will sit for three days to review the suit, first filed by the ruling Georgian Dream party about a year ago. The court’s ruling is final and cannot be appealed in Georgia, and it must hand down its decision by June 2027.
Georgian Dream, in power since 2012, wants the five parties outlawed on the grounds that they pose “a real threat to the constitutional order”. The lawsuit follows a 2024 parliamentary election that the opposition says was rigged.
The ruling would mean “depriving a large part of Georgian society of genuine political choice and fundamentally changing the nature of the country’s political system”, said Giorgi Butikashvili, foreign secretary of the Ahali-Coalition for Change, a party named in the suit.
Rights groups and the European Union have condemned the move. Georgia received EU candidate status in 2023, but Brussels now says it has backslid so far on democratic reforms that it is considered a candidate country “in name only”. Georgian Dream says it is protecting the country from opposition figures it accuses of trying to seize power and foment war with Russia.
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