After three days of massive protests in Georgia, bringing together tens of thousands of people, the ruling government has decided to withdraw a particularly controversial bill. It was also announced that those arrested during the mobilization would be released. In this Caucasian country, in the grip of a political crisis for several years, and a candidate for EU membership since March 2022, part of the population fears an authoritarian drift on the Russian model. The bill has also been compared by its detractors to a text in force in Moscow on “foreign agents” and used to silence opponents of the Kremlin.
The text of the Georgian government indeed planned to classify as “foreign agents” NGOs and media receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad, under penalty of fines. After the rejection of the text by Parliament at second reading, nearly 300 demonstrators gathered peacefully in front of the headquarters of the body on Friday, with a discreet police presence. “The Georgian people have prevailed and will continue to fight for their European future,” said Saba Meourmishvili, a 20-year-old student, amid demonstrators holding signs bearing the words “We are Europe”.
Can we speak of an “attempted” coup?
For Moscow, the mobilization is a “pretext to launch an attempt at regime change by force”, said Friday the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov. He compared the protests to the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, seen by Moscow as a coup plotted by the West that has supported kyiv in the face of Russian invasion for a year. The Russian presidency said it saw in this mobilization “the hand” of the United States, trying to provoke “anti-Russian sentiment”.
“We already have Russian troops in our country,” retorted from New York, Georgian President Salomé Zurabishvili, pro-Western but with limited powers. “This did not prevent Georgia from remaining independent and pursuing its path towards Europe […] Nothing will be able to prevent us from it”, she continued, hammering that it is “the only way which exists for a sovereign and independent Georgia”.
How did the international community react?
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier supported President Zurabishvili and assured her that “Germany supports Georgia on the way to Europe”. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, for his part denounced “very strong pressure” weighing on Georgia, “crossed by worrying movements”, wishing “an appeasement in relation to regional tensions”.
