from Anti-Spiegel
December 31, 2024 6:00 am
The situation in Georgia appears to be calming down further as the protests subside and the new president has been sworn in, despite the previous president threatening not to vacate the presidential palace when her term expires on December 29th.
The attempted color revolution in Georgia has clearly failed, although protests in the country escalated in late November. From the beginning of the escalation, I documented the chronology of events in two articles with detailed summaries of each day's events. The events from November 29th to December 3rd can be found here, the events from December 4th to 14th can be found here.
It's not very fruitful to write another summary like this because the protests subsided afterwards and things became much quieter. Therefore, I will only briefly summarize the events since mid-December, but I want to start with the most important news.
New President Inaugurated.
There were fears that protests would flare up again on December 29, because that day was the inauguration of Georgia's newly elected president. The previous pro-Western incumbent, French citizen Salome Zurabishvili, had announced that she would not recognize the election of the new President Mikhail Kavelashvili and that she would not vacate the presidential palace. But things turned out differently and she left the official residence voluntarily.
The reason for this may have been that the protests have subsided and it is clear that the color revolution has failed.
On December 22nd, Zurabishvili once again called for new parliamentary elections to take place before December 29th, the last day of her term as president. However, the Prime Minister had warned them against this because it was a breach of the constitution, which only provides for new elections if an election has been annulled, if Parliament has withdrawn confidence in the government and if the regular legislative period has expired. Any other call for new elections would be punishable as an attempted coup, he warned the president.
This apparently convinced Zurabishvili, because she then stopped repeating the demand and left her official residence when her term of office expired on December 29th, but that day she joined the demonstrators who were protesting against the inauguration of the new president. The not-too-impressive protest march of perhaps a few thousand people then moved through the capital, but it remained peaceful.
Sanctions And Demands For New Elections From The West.
Meanwhile, the West continues its pressure on Georgia. The EU wanted to introduce sanctions against Georgia on December 16th, but this failed due to the veto of Hungary and Slovakia. Germany then announced that it wanted to form a “coalition of the willing” in the EU from countries that would then introduce their own sanctions against Georgia without the EU.
The German Foreign Ministry issued a press release on December 26th saying:
“The majority of people in Georgia want their country to continue on its European path. They carry Europe in their hearts, the pro-European protests are their voice. But those responsible for the ruling Georgian Dream party respond with intimidation, violence and water cannons. Through its anti-European turn, the “Georgian Dream” deliberately put Georgia’s EU accession process on hold and thus effectively suspended it.”
In doing so, the Baerbock ministry distorted the truth, because it was the EU that had de facto broken off all talks with the Georgian government in the summer. The Georgian government only reacted to this on November 28th and announced that it would stop talks with the EU because Georgia was not a supplicant. They are continuing the reforms required by the EU and want to continue to achieve EU accession, but they want to negotiate with the EU on an equal footing and be recognized as an equal partner.
On December 28, the United States imposed sanctions on billionaire and founder of Georgia's Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken justified the sanctions with his alleged “friendliness to Russia”, which, however, cannot be said because the party he founded has been in power since 2012 and Georgia does not even have diplomatic relations with Russia.
On December 29, the foreign ministers of Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Estonia once again dutifully called on the Georgian government to hold new elections.
Of course, this does not mean that the West's attempts to overthrow the government in Georgia are over. They will continue and there may be new surprises at any time, but this attempted color revolution may have failed.
The Backstory.
As a reminder, I would like to briefly repeat the history of the events.
After the Georgian government passed a law against foreign interference in Georgian politics in May, which requires NGOs, media outlets and bloggers that receive 20 or more percent of their income from abroad to disclose their finances so that everyone can see whose Because they are active, the West's relations with Georgia have deteriorated. The EU has broken off contacts with the Georgian government and the US has responded with further threats if the law remains in force.
The Georgian government won the absolute majority of votes in the parliamentary elections on October 26th. The Western-financed opposition does not recognize the election victory, the same applies to the incumbent Georgian president, a French citizen, and the West.
A month of peaceful demonstrations followed, but on November 28th the Georgian government responded to the EU's behavior and announced that it would continue the reforms required by the EU for accession, but freeze the accession process itself until 2028. Georgia will continue its reforms so that talks can resume in 2028 and EU accession in 2030 is possible.
The government justified the interruption of the accession negotiations with the unfriendly and arrogant steps of the EU and the government called for respectful contacts and negotiations on equal terms. Georgia is a proud country and doesn't want handouts.
The protests then escalated into open street battles on the night of November 29th, which lasted through the first half of December and then subsided.