David Zedelashvili

Pity that you had to cancel the “Nations in Transit” report. This year, Georgia would have made it to the “semi-consolidated authoritarian regime” category there, on the path of rapid consolidation and stabilization.
Georgia ceased to be a democracy in any sense. Tragically.

Well, academic opinion on hegemonic elec autocracies tilts towards your position. As more beneficial option between evils.. Again, with the caveat that there is a choice at all, like an impending ban in our case.

Well, I guess the regime has now closed this debate. It will ban all non systemic opposition. Constructive opposition will certainly take part.

Georgia’s Last Stand: Poets, Protesters, and the Fight Against Russian Rule - The Politic On July 22, 1937, at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge, the poet Paolo Iashvili walked into the Writer’s House in Tbilisi, now a sanctuary for Georgia’s literary elite, then a courtroom of fear. The ...

A very good read with my humble contributions thepolitic.org/georgias-las...

How the U.S. Can Fight for Georgia’s Democracy An act in Congress could help curtail the Georgian Dream party.

foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/26/g...

Diamonds, Dior and Dubai Vacations: The Luxurious Lives of Georgia's Call-Center Scammers They called themselves “skameri.” In behind-the-scenes chats, they celebrated bilking victims out of their life savings and spent their earnings on lavish vacations, jewelry, and cars. They bragged th...

www.occrp.org/en/project/s...

Interested in how authoritarian regime penetrates, compromises and captures society ? By making people complicit in their crimes.
This is the social-economic model of authoritarianism that does not have minerals or resources to survive. When you can’t plunder oil money, you steal abroad.

In the eyes of these elites, pro-democracy social resistance is an unintended and unwanted consequence of their previous flirtations with liberalism and democracy—an aberration, in their view, to be crushed./END

Considering these factors, Georgia’s recent consolidation as a hegemonic electoral autocracy is a predictable outcome. /4

The same elites have now strengthened, having created a strong state and captured it. They have also witnessed the era of democracy promotion fade away. Reconnecting with the resurgent authoritarian masters in the Kremlin, they see greater benefits in global autocratic networks. /3

It reflected their relative weakness, their lack of capacity to consolidate authoritarianism, and, most notably, an external incentive—to reap the benefits of a democratic facade in an era of democracy promotion. /2

🧵In my previous academic work, I have argued that the post-Soviet Georgian elites’ choice of illiberal democracy as a preferred political regime for Georgia was deliberate and conscious. /1

Hans has been vocal on this issue for a long time. This needs to be taken seriously in Germany. The reputation of German legal education is at stake.

This is the first step on the road to complete withdrawal from the COE. It is apparently what the regime's Russian masters also prefer. This means that Georgia will return to PACE only after the collapse of Ivanishvili regime.

After the PACE resolution conditioning their membership in the assembly on new elections, halting repression, and releasing political prisoners, the Ivanishvili regime decided to quit PACE.

Georgia must investigate use of force by police during demonstrations: Experts GENEVA – Independent human rights experts* today urged the Government of Georgia to take concrete measures to prevent further violence and to investigate allegations of excessive use of force by law e...

www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel...

Six UN Special rapporteurs have issued joint statement today calling for urgent investigation into systematic torture and inhuman treatment of protesters in Georgia.

Ivanishvili regime is enacting a properly Stalinist public execution show of this brave woman. In the footsteps of its patron Kremlin regime it brings back vile totalitarian practices.
This needs to stop. 🛑

It’s the first time in my career—and I’ve been a journalist for 9 years—that I’m holding a protest banner in my hands. Congrats, GD. You’ve done it; you’ve erased all the lines between journalism and activism for us.

FREEDOM FOR MZIA AMAGLOBELI!

As in Russia, the intensity of repression under the GD regime in Georgia has already surpassed that of the late years of Soviet rule.

Since the Russian law protests in the spring, the regime has criminally prosecuted 46 political prisoners. To compare, in the USSR of the 70s-80s, the annual number of political prisoners in the union never exceeded 90.

My inboxes are getting hit by messages asking whether I'm still at liberty. Even though I have long expected this hell unleash in #Georgia it still feels surreal to answer those well regarded inquiries, that as it stands, the regime still has not yet arrived at my doors. 😊

Ivanishvili's quisling regime has isolated #Georgia alienated its allies and undermined its sovereignty for the benefit of Russia. Georgian people are once again at war against Russia's imperial domination with a quisling regime of Ivanishvili.
It is urgent to sanction Russia's puppet Ivanishvili.

this is clearly not the case with Ivanishvili's quisling regime. It is an illegitimate regime of usurpation. As a result of manipulated, hegemonic elections, it can no longer claim any democratic legitimacy. All institutions it controls lack legitimacy and are captured to serve the regime.

Russia's quisling regime in Tbilisi has unleashed a brutal wave of mass repression against the Georgian people. This is not just "disproportionate force." Words, especially legal terms, matter. It would imply that some modicum of legitimacy remains;

This right, already greatly undermined, is in the regime's crosshairs, to be eradicated for the foreseeable future.

Tomorrow, the self-legitimation spectacle will be conducted against the backdrop of mass protests. Importantly, these protests will have to fight for the preservation of the meaningful right to protest itself.

As it seeks long-term stabilization, GD/Ivanishvili will seek to neutralize all remaining vertical threats in the form of mass protests.

Having made all legal avenues to challenge its illegitimacy meaningless, the regime has left only limited options for political struggle to counter its grip on power.