TBILISI: Thousands of pro-EU Georgians took to the streets of Tbilisi on Friday on the anniversary of a government decision to shelve the country’s accession to the bloc that triggered mass protests.
Georgia has been gripped by political crisis since a parliamentary vote last year — which the opposition denounced as rigged in favor of the ruling Georgian Dream party and rejected the results.
The government’s announcement on November 28, 2024 that it would not seek the opening of EU membership talks with Brussels until 2028 led to mass protests.
But turnout at daily rallies outside Georgia’s parliament has since dwindled from an initial tens of thousands to a few hundred in the face of heavy fines imposed on protesters and the arrests of activists and opposition leaders.
On Friday evening, several thousand demonstrators, many of them waving EU and Georgian flags, paraded down Tbilisi’s main avenue before holding a rally in front of parliament.
“Georgia belongs in Europe and we are not going to let a pro-Russian government that clings to power through electoral fraud take away our European future,” one of the demonstrators, philologist Tsiala Nodia, 61, told AFP.
“Georgia may be small but it stands for something big — for freedom,” added Ilia Chigvinadze, a 47-year-old maths teacher. “This Russian-style authoritarianism won’t win here.”
The governing Georgian Dream party has rejected mounting accusations at home and abroad of democratic backsliding and a pro-Russian tilt.
Brussels has effectively frozen Tbilisi’s accession process until the government reverses course.
EU-candidate Tbilisi’s bid to join the 27-nation bloc is enshrined in the country’s constitution and supported by 80 percent of the population, according to opinion polls.