Protesters rallied in Georgia\u2019s capital for a fourth straight night on Sunday and there were signs that opposition was spreading across the country to the government\u2019s decision to suspend talks on joining the European Union. <\/p>\n
The country of 3.7 million people has seen months of rising tension between the ruling Georgian Dream party and opponents who accuse it of pursuing increasingly authoritarian, anti-Western and pro-Russian policies. <\/p>\n
The crisis has deepened since Thursday\u2019s announcement that the government would freeze EU talks for four years, with thousands of pro-EU demonstrators facing off against police armed with tear gas and water cannon. <\/p>\n
Protesters gathered again in Tbilisi on Sunday night on the central Rustaveli Avenue. Beyond the capital, Georgian news agency Interpress said demonstrators had blocked an access road into the country\u2019s main commercial port in the Black Sea city of Poti. <\/p>\n
Georgian media reported protests in at least eight cities and towns. Opposition TV channel Formula showed footage of people in Khashuri, a town of 20,000 in central Georgia, throwing eggs at the local Georgian Dream office and tearing down the party\u2019s flag. <\/p>\n
The EU and the United States are alarmed by what they see as Georgia\u2019s shift away from a pro-Western path and back towards Russia\u2019s orbit. Georgian Dream says it is acting to defend the country\u2019s sovereignty against outside interference. <\/p>\n
Russia is following developments closely. Security official Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president, said an attempted revolution was taking place and wrote on Telegram that Georgia was \u201cmoving rapidly along the Ukrainian path, into the dark abyss. Usually this sort of thing ends very badly.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Kremlin itself has yet to comment on the latest events in Georgia, but it has long accused the West of fomenting revolutions in post-Soviet countries that Moscow still regards as part of its sphere of influence. <\/p>\n
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze dismissed criticism by the United States, which has condemned the use of \u201cexcessive force\u201d against demonstrators. <\/p>\n
\u201cDespite the heaviest systematic violence applied yesterday by the violent groups and their foreign instructors, the police acted at a higher standard than the American and European ones and successfully protected the state from another attempt to violate the constitutional order,\u201d he told a press conference, without providing evidence of foreign involvement. <\/p>\n
Kobakhidze also shrugged off Washington\u2019s announcement on Saturday that it was suspending a strategic partnership with Georgia. He said this was a \u201ctemporary event\u201d, and Georgia would talk to the new administration of President-elect Donald Trump when it takes office in January. <\/p>\n
Deepening the constitutional crisis in the country, outgoing President Salome Zourabichvili \u2013 a critic of the government and a strong advocate of Georgian membership of the EU \u2013 said on Saturday that she would refuse to step down when her term ends later this month. <\/p>\n
Zourabichvili said she would stay in office because the new parliament \u2013 chosen in October in elections that the opposition says were rigged \u2013 was illegitimate and had no authority to name her successor. <\/p>\n
Kobakhidze said he understood Zourabichvili\u2019s \u201cemotional state\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut of course on December 29 she will have to leave her residence and surrender this building to a legitimately elected president,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Hundreds of diplomats and civil servants have signed open letters protesting that the suspension of EU talks is unlawful because the goal of joining the bloc is enshrined in Georgia\u2019s constitution. Kobakhidze confirmed that the ambassador to Washington was among a number of senior diplomats who had resigned. <\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s foreign ministry said in a statement that foreign states were trying to \u201cinterfere in the functioning of the institutions of a sovereign state\u201d, and that this was unacceptable. <\/p>\n
For much of the period since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia has leaned strongly towards the West and tried to loosen the influence of Russia, to which it lost a brief war in 2008. It has been promised eventual NATO membership, and became an official candidate for EU entry last year. <\/p>\n
But domestic opponents and Western governments have become increasingly concerned that Georgian Dream is intent \u2013 despite its denials \u2013 on abandoning that course. In June, it enacted a law obliging NGOs to register as \u201cforeign agents\u201d if they received more than 20% of their funding from abroad. In September, parliament approved a law curbing LGBT rights. <\/p>\n
The government says it is defending the country\u2019s sovereignty and trying to prevent it from suffering the fate of Ukraine by being dragged into a new war with Russia. <\/p>\n
The EU\u2019s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who took office on Sunday, voiced solidarity with the demonstrators. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand with the Georgian people and their choice for a European future,\u201d she posted on X. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe condemn the violence against protesters & regret signals from ruling party not to pursue Georgia\u2019s path to EU and democratic backsliding of the country. This will have direct consequences from EU side.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Protesters rallied in Georgia\u2019s capital for a fourth straight night on Sunday and there were signs that opposition was spreading across the country to the government\u2019s decision to suspend talks on joining the European Union. The country of 3.7 million people has seen months of rising tension between the ruling Georgian Dream party and opponents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}