Georgia at a Crossroads
Georgia stands at a crossroads. Once a beacon of democratic reforms in the post-Soviet space, the country has grown increasingly authoritarian under its current government and distanced itself from the West. The parliamentary elections on 26 October 2024 will be a defining moment.
In the spring of 2024, peaceful protests took place over several weeks in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and in other cities across the country. Tens of thousands of mainly young people took to the streets to protest against a bill requiring organizations that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad to register as agents «pursuing the interest of a foreign power». The ruling «Georgian Dream» party argued that the bill it had drafted and presented to parliament was modeled on the US Foreign Agents Registration Act. Critics, on the other hand, saw it as inspired by a Russian law used by the Kremlin to clamp down on political opponents and suppress dissenting voices.