Georgian Opposition Plans Takeover of Country From Pro-Russian Government To Break ‘Stalemate’ 

Every day, for nearly a year, the protesters have gathered in the capital of Tbilisi.  

They hold signs reading “Down with the oligarchy” and chant “No to Russian elections.” Occasionally, these protests turn violent as they did early last month, when supporters of the government threw bottles and rocks at the demonstrators in front of the campaign headquarters of Georgian Dream’s Tbilisi mayor, Kakha Kaladze: He is up for reelection in local elections on Oct. 4 along with dozens of others across the country. 

Still, the demonstrators came back the next day.  

That’s because the political opposition is determined to bring down the coalition government of the Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia parties. It must be brought down, opponents add, for the sake of Georgia and its people. They plan to do so on Oct. 4, opposition organizers say, when they will take over the government and install a technocratic replacement.  

“We want to peacefully topple (Georgian Dream leader, billionaire) Bidzina Ivanishvili – give us the opportunity to do this peacefully,” Paata Burchuladze, a renowned Georgian opera singer and leader of the Rustaveli Avenue activist group, told Georgia’s Interpressnews. “If you arrest us all, people will come out and you’ll see what happens to you.” 

“They failed to take us seriously in time. It’s too late now,” he added. “On Oct. 4, Georgia will regain its freedom, the people will regain power.”  

Conservative Georgian Dream first came to power in 2012 with nationalist rhetoric and a promise to continue the country’s push for European Union membership. However, the party has turned increasingly authoritarian and pro-Russian over the past few years, analysts say. 

Daily demonstrations initially broke out against the government after parliamentary elections in October 2024, when Georgian Dream secured 54 percent of the vote in elections that the opposition and Western governments say were marked by fraud and Russian interference. 

Since the 2008 invasion of Georgia, a former Soviet republic, Moscow has occupied about 20 percent of Georgian territories, including two breakaway provinces, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and has expanded its influence over the government, analysts say. 

Protests intensified following the government’s decision in November to delay membership talks with the European Union until 2028, Al Jazeera noted. 

A majority of Georgians want EU membership, a goal written into the 1995 Georgian Constitution. The country received EU candidate status in December 2023 but relations with Brussels deteriorated following the adoption of a Russian-style “foreign agent” law this spring, which critics argue threatens civil liberties and press freedoms and is intended to suppress dissent.  

Georgia Dream officials are also trying to ban all opposition parties after the October elections. Until then, they have been violently cracking down on members of the opposition, civil society and media, and are accused of using excessive force and torture against opponents and imprisoning them on trumped-up charges.  

In June, a court sentenced opposition figure Giorgi Vashadze, a leader of the Strategy Builder party, to seven months in prison and banned him from holding public office for two years for refusing to cooperate with a commission probing abuse of power by a former government. Critics say the commission is a government tool to silence opponents. 

“The Georgian Dream regime has imprisoned the whole of Georgia,” Vashadze said. “We are fighting for the country’s liberation.” 

In early September, authorities arrested Levan Khabeishvili, a leader of the United National Movement (UNM), the largest opposition party in the country, after he called for a “peaceful revolution” during the upcoming elections. The UNM said the arrest demonstrated that the government is scared it will lose the election, even as some parties have said they will boycott the vote because it is a sham: In some districts, Georgian Dream candidates are running unopposed after opposition candidates were pressured to bow out. 

Still, analysts say they expect Georgian Dream to lose support: A recent poll found that a majority of Georgians (57.1 percent) said the country is moving in the wrong direction, with 33 percent disagreeing.  

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has refused to step down, warning that the planned “takeover” would be met with “appropriate” force by the security forces. 

“They are directly talking about radicalism, setting things on fire, Molotov (cocktails), overthrowing the government,” he said. “I call on everyone to treat their rhetoric with caution. The state and the law will (strictly handle) any display of radicalism.” 

As tensions grow, Georgia, in the meantime, is stuck, say former officials.  

“The country is in a standoff,” former Georgian President Salomé Zourabichvili told the Associated Press in June. “They have now put political leaders, almost all of them, into jail, but still the protests are ongoing. And the protests will go on until there is unity…and until the regime dissolves itself.”