Tbilisi (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The outgoing president of Georgia urged the European Union to push her country’s pro-Russia administration to conduct a new election amid police violence against peaceful protesters.
Thousands of protestors have filled the streets regularly in recent weeks since the ruling Georgian Dream party decided to discontinue negotiations on joining the European Union. Police have increasingly employed force and intimidation in their actions to break up the demonstrations. The Europen Union gave Georgia candidate status for membership in December 2023 but set the accession proposal on hold and cut financial aid in June after the approval of a “foreign influence” regulation that was widely noticed as a blow to democratic freedoms.
Why is Georgia’s president calling for new elections?
As reported by AP News, departing Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili asked EU lawmakers in Strasbourg: “Europe must find the leverage to act. If Europe cannot exercise leverage on a nation of 3.7 million, how can it expect to contend with the giants of the 21st century?”
Further, she stated, “While European flags are being restricted in Tbilisi, Georgians are still lingering for binding measures to come from the European Union and Washington.” She added that the road protests won’t halt “until Georgia gets a free and fair election.” “We either go to elections, or we go someplace that we do not know, but that definitely will be a crisis that you will have to deal (with) in much direr circumstances,” she cautioned.
European Union foreign ministers approved to imposition of visa limitations on Georgian diplomats and government officers. They also considered a list of Georgian representatives to set sanctions on, but no agreement could be attained.
Zourabichvili indicated that this wasn’t sufficient, and she advised the world’s biggest trading bloc to utilise its weight as Georgia’s biggest donor, most significant economic market, and home to the South Caucasus country’s largest diaspora. “If we are honest, Europe so far has not fully lived (up) to the point. Europe has, so far, met the challenge halfway,” she stated. “Where Georgians have been battling day and night, Europeans have been sluggish to wake up and restrict to react.”
