On April 29, in one of his rare public appearances, Bidzina Ivanishvili — the founder and de facto leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party and a reclusive billionaire — accused the United States and the European Union of being a Western “global party of war” and meddling in Georgia’s internal affairs.
Taking a page from Vladimir Putin’s playbook, Ivanishvili vowed to reintroduce a law on “foreign agents”, which would label organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from abroad as being under foreign influence. The Kremlin-style law would allow the government to eliminate NGOs working for democracy and the rule of law, suppress independent media, and eradicate the opposition. Given this, the conclusion of Ivanishvili’s speech, in which he promised EU accession, sounded like an Orwellian joke.
The speech, which was quickly followed by the law’s passage on May 14, marked Georgia’s turn towards an autocratic regime similar to that of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Tens of thousands of protesters, led by Georgia’s young people, have taken to the streets to express their dissent, and their numbers continue to grow despite the government’s violent attacks on opposition politicians and demonstrators.