Georgia takes to the streets against a Russian-inspired foreign agent law

Thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets these days against the approval of legislation inspired by the Russian one and that would make difficult the survival of NGOs and associations critical of the power – as well as numerous social projects financed with external aid – that the The Government itself had ruled it out last year after massive protests. The European Union has criticized the new attempt as incompatible with Georgia's candidacy for the community club, approved last December and still pending the opening of accession negotiations.

At noon this Wednesday, the Georgian Parliament met to debate the controversial legislation after two days of intense protests. The demonstrations around the assembly building have brought together more than 10,000 people every night since Monday and have culminated in more than two dozen arrests and several injuries due to police repression. In fact, protests on Tuesday forced the vote to be postponed to this Wednesday. Of the 150 deputies, 83 gave their support to the text of the Transparency Law on Foreign Influence while outside the building, hundreds of protesters chanted slogans against what they consider a “Russian law.”

This approval in first reading should be followed by two other rounds of voting in the coming weeks, although the Georgian Dream party, led by Prime Minister Irakli Kobajidze, has an absolute majority along with other allied parties.

The opposition, protesters and numerous social organizations have criticized the law as an attempt to transpose the Kremlin's legislation on “foreign agents”, which has ended the critical panorama in Russia. According to the text, any organization that receives more than 20% of its financing from abroad must register as an “agent of the interests of a foreign power” and the Georgian Ministry of Justice will carry out inspections on them every six months, which which, according to critics, could force the handover of internal and confidential documents, communications.

This would be a serious blow to numerous projects, from agricultural development to women's programs, financed with money from the EU or the United States. But, above all, it is seen as a direct attack on the political and human rights organizations that monitor power and that, given that the opposition is divided and weakened, have become the main obstacle for a party that has gone, little little by little, taking a good part of the State institutions under its control.

For international observers, it is especially worrying in the face of the elections next October, in which the polls give an advantage to Sueño Georgiano, but its majority in the chamber could be in danger (after the previous elections, in 2020, the opposition denounced threats and purchases of voting in rural areas). The president of Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, on the other hand, has defended the “transparency” law as a text that is “in the interest of the Georgian people”, and has accused the protesters of “using violence to achieve their political objectives.” , as well as being “anti-European and anti-Georgian”

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The country's president, Salome Zurabishvili, has become one of the spokespersons for discontent. Zurabishvili—whom the prime minister's party supported for office, but then subjected to a failed election process impeachment for his unauthorized contacts with European leaders – opened a new front with the Government last week by announcing the pardon of one of those arrested in last year's demonstrations, who had been sentenced to nine years in prison for allegedly attacking police. This weekend, in an interview with the television channel Pirveli, He accused the ruling party of “sabotaging Georgia's European path” and “serving Russian interests” by resurrecting a law that the protests had overturned and that the prime minister himself promised not to put to a vote again.

“It has become the Russian Dream,” declared the president, playing on the name of the political party, which came to power in 2012 riding a wave of discontent with the neoliberal policies of the then head of state, Mikhail Saakashvili, and his growing authoritarianism. Georgian Dream was created by the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, with economic interests in Russia and who, although she has formally retired from the political career, is still considered its shadow rector. The party has won every election in the last decade, thanks to a more social policy and a stance of less confrontation with Moscow than that of Saakashvili, while at the same time betting on European integration.

Increasingly ultra-conservative speech

However, in recent years, it has abandoned its center-left tendency and has opted for an increasingly ultra-conservative discourse, for example, eliminating the quota of a minimum of 25% of women on party lists or by passing laws against “LGTBI propaganda” and “gender ideology”.

The EU does not understand the Government's turnaround after the boost that came with the granting of candidate status for a Member State granted last December. “I will be clear: the draft law is not consistent with Georgia's European aspirations,” warned the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, on Tuesday, and, this Wednesday, the EU diplomatic service warned in a statement that, if legislation ends up being adopted, “it will have a negative impact” on the accession process.

“Precisely now that we were waiting for the Georgian Government to make merit in the face of the decision that the European Council will have to make in December on whether to start accession negotiations, they recover this law that contravenes several of the conditions set by the EU,” laments one European diplomatic source in Tblisi, the country's capital: “We have had many meetings and the hope is that they will back down, but they pretend that they do not understand. The feeling is like hitting a wall.”

“This law only makes sense if the Government intends to initiate a repressive path. The law is unpopular. Two-thirds of young people are completely opposed, and even Georgian Dream voters are, at best, indifferent to it,” says university professor and analyst Hans Gutbrod from Tblisi: “The important thing now is for the West to make it clear that there will be consequences for the Georgian Dream elite, you have to show that you can be strong when you face bullies.”

Pro-European protesters have also gained a new ally: football. The players of the Georgian team have become national heroes after eliminating Greece and reaching the final phase of the Euro Cup for the first time in their history. In recent days, its biggest stars, such as Valencia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili or Napoli winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, have published comments on social networks against the law on foreign agents and against Russia, and in favor of the EU. The Spanish-Georgian fighter Ilia Topuria has also published similar messages.

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