During protests against the ruling party Georgian dream, the Georgian police deployed PepperSpray and a water cannon on Saturday to expel protesters from the presidential palace in the capital Tbilisi. Reuters news agency reports this. Certainly one person was injured. The protests took place on the day that Georgia goes to the polls for local elections that are boycot by the largest opposition parties in the country.
A group of protesters tried to force access to the presidential palace after some opposition members had called for a “peaceful revolution” against the authoritarian and pro-Russian Georgian dream. That party makes it easier to assess and tackle NGOs as “foreign agents” through the import of a new law this year. According to critics, the law aims to close the country from Western cooperation and to further float Georgia in Russian poor.
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The pro-Western opposition in Georgia has been organizing protests almost daily since last year. The immediate reason is the result of the parliamentary elections. These elections are probably fraudulent, in favor of Georgian dream.
Although the local elections will not change much about national policy in Georgia – municipalities have a very limited influence – Georgian dream can use the result to demonstrate its popularity and thereby ‘legitimize’ the election results of last year.
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Anyone who stands up for the rule of law in Georgia now risks imprisonment
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