Mikheil Kavelashvili. Photo: EPA-EFE/IRAKLI GEDENIDZE / POOL
Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili, from the ruling pro-Russian Georgian Dream party, approved a raft of controversial new laws on the day of his inauguration. The laws were published on Georgia’s official legal information portal on Sunday.
The new laws mean protesters may no longer use pyrotechnics or wear masks and the application process to work at the Interior Ministry will be simplified. Kavelashvili also approved amendments stripping outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili of privileges and allowing civil servants to be dismissed on political grounds.
The opposition is still demanding a re-run of October’s parliamentary elections, in which the Central Election Commission declared the ruling Georgian Dream party the winner, giving it 89 out of 150 seats in the new parliament, which the opposition is boycotting.
Opposition parties also refused to take part in the presidential election of 14 December, where Kavelashvili was the sole candidate. It was the first time since independence that Georgia had not elected its president by a popular vote, but by an electoral college, following a constitutional amendment that was spearheaded by Georgian Dream in 2022.
Addressing hundreds of anti-government protesters who had gathered outside the Orbeliani Palace on Sunday morning, Zourabichvili said that while she would make way for her far-right populist successor, she would be “taking legitimacy with her”.
Zourabichvili condemned Kavelashvili’s first act as president in a post on X, saying that a “new wave of violence and repression” marked the “de facto inauguration of a de facto president”.
