Former president Salome Zourabichvili declared that “political life in Georgia has effectively ended” after 49 MPs, who claim recent elections were rigged, officially lost their mandates, leaving parliament without opposition deputies.
Georgia, a country of 3.7 million people, has been in political chaos since a contested parliamentary ballot in October, which the ruling Kremlin-friendly Georgian Dream party declared it had won.
But opposition figures, including former president Zourabichvili, claim the vote was rigged.
Opposition MPs decided to boycott sittings of the new parliament, with 49 of them announcing they were renouncing their mandates as lawmakers.
On Wednesday, the parliament, in which Georgian Dream has a majority, accepted the declarations. The move left the chamber with no opposition.
Following a meeting with EU countries’ ambassadors on Wednesday, Zourabichvili said: “Political life in Georgia has effectively ended today because there is no longer any political space.”
“The constitution no longer exists, and no rights are protected—neither the right to free expression nor the right of assembly,” she added.
The former president urged Western allies of Georgia to put pressure on the government in Tbilisi to repeat the disputed elections.
“There must be a joint demand from us and our partner countries for elections to take place,” she said.
Zourabichvili also criticized changes, such as a ‘foreign agent’ bill, introduced by Georgian Dream, calling them “nothing but repressive” and comparing the ruling party to a “Russian-style dictatorship.”
