The hearing on Georgian Dream’s lawsuit to declare five opposition parties unconstitutional continues today at 12:00, Interpressnews reported this morning, and Nadaraia said the proceedings are at the stage of hearing the parties’ explanations, with Ana Tsitlidze speaking for the United National Movement. Since the case opened on 21 October the plenum of seven judges has granted none of the motions filed by the opposition parties, including For Georgia’s motion to call Bidzina Ivanishvili and other Georgian Dream figures as witnesses.
Monday’s session opened with the plaintiff’s case. “We do not have the right to turn a blind eye to specific facts, to forget the heavy experience of the past, the coordinated actions in the present, and to leave future generations a state whose statehood and the foundations of its constitutional order will be unprotected,” Georgian Dream’s Archil Gorduladze said in presenting the lawsuit. The parties created after 2012, he argued, “do not distance themselves” from the pre-2012 government and “even enter into a coalition with the creators of that regime,” which he said brings them under Article 23 of the constitution.
Since the case opened on 21 October the plenum of seven judges has granted none of the motions filed by the opposition parties, including For Georgia’s motion to call Bidzina Ivanishvili and other Georgian Dream figures as witnesses.
The exchange of the day came when Zaza Bibilashvili, speaking for the United National Movement, turned to Manana Kobakhidze’s request to recuse herself, which was refused, and her subsequent resignation. Nadaraia interrupted. “To a certain extent, indirectly, you have insulted the court when you cast doubt on our impartiality. You are expressing disrespect and this too will have its limit, take note!” he said, in Interpressnews’s English text.
Bibilashvili said the party has “no illusions whatsoever regarding the outcome of this process” and recalled that “a representative of one of the parties, who is formally the most powerful official in this country, said that the fate of this case is decided and only a few days remain.”
Shalva Kereselidze of Gakharia for Georgia said the party will relinquish its parliamentary mandates if it is banned. “None of the mandates are majoritarian. These are proportional mandates received directly by the party,” he said, and without the party “these mandates will have no value or force.”
The lawsuit is signed by 88 members of parliament and carries the conclusion of the parliament’s temporary investigative commission. The five parties are the United National Movement, the Coalition for Change, Lelo, the Federalist Party and Gakharia for Georgia.
Outside the courtroom the week opened with an opposition rally in Tbilisi on Sunday. Georgian Dream members spent Monday on its size, one of them saying in an Interpressnews headline that the opposition “could not even properly mobilize 500 people,” while Gigi Tsereteli of the opposition called it “the start of a protest campaign.”