Nuremberg for National Movement: Commission to be Created to Investigate “Crimes” of the Opposition

In the background of unprecedented protests in Georgia, so far lasting over two months, the ruling Georgian Dream party announced the “Nuremberg trial” of its political opponents. In keeping with the pre-election promise by the founder of the party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, an investigative commission will be created in parliament to study the activity of the “bloody regime of the United National Movement” and its political figures in the period from 2003 to 2012. Considering that National Movement authorities mean the entire opposition, Georgia will face widespread political repressions. 

Translated by Adrian Bader

“Consultations on the issue of creating an investigative commission have already begun,” Deputy Vladimir Bozhadze of Georgian Dream said on January 31st. He recalled that members of United National Movement are already serving their sentences in prison, for example, former president Mikhael Saakashvili, but there are still those “who fled from the country and are evading Georgian justice”.

“Of course, such a commission is important, especially for the last 12 years that Georgian Dream has held power, there’s never been a legal assessment of National Movement as a regime. This has been for subjective and objective reasons, and we are committing to the election promise that in the spring session a commission will be created that will work for six months”.

The special commission, according to Bozhadze, will remind citizens, the “regime” that is National Movement, about the number of issues, blood, and tears they’ve brought to the country and “who the people are today that are still trying to return to this power through violence under the cover of various modified political parties”

Georgian Dream intends to implement their election promise the party’s executive secretary Mamuka Mdinaradze announced in early January. At this time, the leader of the majority parliament also listed the crimes it plans to call the previous authorities on:

“These include: torture of prisoners and the system of torture in penitentiary institutions; murders, violence, invasion of privacy; corruption and pressure on enterprises to coerce them into giving up their assets; seizure of media from their legal owners; admission of responsibility for the start of the 2008 war and accusation of war crimes by Georgian soldiers”.

How Georgian Dream plans to investigate these crimes isn’t clear yet. In accordance with parliament rules, half of the members of the temporary investigative commission must be opposition deputies. There were 4 (not including Georgian Dream itself) parties/coalitions after parliamentary elections that received the 5% barrier and abandoned their own mandates due to falsification. The political forces that boycotted the parliament’s work and didn’t recognize it as legitimate, obviously won’t participate in the commission.

However, according to experts, oligarch Ivanishvili managed to prepare for this scenario. In the middle of December the Power of the People party, which ran in elections under one name with Georgian Dream, announced their exit from the parliamentary majority. The movement, founded by politicians who formally left the ruling party’s side, then announced that their main goal was forming a “healthy opposition” in the country. As a result, the authorities created the appearance that the Georgian Parliament wasn’t single-party. This trick helped them go around the procedural regulations. It’s already known that due to the opposition quota, the investigative commission will include Power of the People representatives.

“Until the collective National Movement is taken to court and removed from politics, nothing will help the country. This has been established by international court decisions, where it is directly stated that during the National Movement’s rule systemic crimes were committed. Accordingly, all that remains is political will,” said Guram Macharashvili, a member of Power of the People.

According to him, deputies of the party are “like members of the parliament opposition,” they will accept participation in the commission’s work. Macharashvili is convinced that establishing guilt by the National party won’t demand any extra effort:

“In my time, when Hitler’s party was tied, they demanded a lot of time to collect evidence. With this incident a lot of time isn’t needed–everything is in full view!”

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze already stated that the authorities intend to force the opposition to cooperate with the investigative commission – refusal to will be punishable by criminal penalties, therefore the political opponents of Georgian Dream will be forced to make a serious choice:

“Everyone will have to cooperate with the investigation, otherwise appropriate measures will be taken against them.”

It’s important to understand that by “National Movement” Georgian Dream doesn’t mean one specific political force. In his campaign speeches, Bidzina Ivanishvili used the term “collective national movement”. Using the logic of Dream, this includes the entire opposition and possibly the citizen spectrum–pro-Western parties, non-government organizations, and critical media.

Opponents of the Oligarch think that the intentional investigation is a sign of a weak authority. According to UNM member Irakli Pavlenishvili, Georgian Dream has been driven into a corner and doesn’t understand that the start of this process doesn’t have to do with the current political situation:

“This once again demonstrates the danger of Ivanishvili for the country and population.”

Oppositionists note that although National Movement is a main target of Georgian Dream, the dictator Bidzina Ivanishvaili “means destruction of all islands of freedom” in the country.

UNM leader Tina Bokuchava has called the decision to create an investigation committee a “circus act”. In her words, the Georgian Dream authorities are trying to distract from their propaganda and lies, but neither the government nor parliament are legitimate, not inside the country or out.

“The Russian regime of Ivanishvili considers itself a Georgian government and for the 13th year in a row talks about the need to judge its political strength which has been located in the authorities already for 13 years. This of course is another Russian propaganda attempt by Ivanishvili to hide his own crimes through another circus act now going to take place in the illegal, de facto parliament.”

For the first time, the oligarch voiced the idea of bringing in the responsibility of former president Mikhail Saakashvili’s party during a meeting about the support of the Russian equivalent of ionogens on April 29th last year.

“After the elections, we will have the opportunity to give the collective National Movement harsh political and juridical sentences which it deserves after nine years of bloody rule and 12 years of destructive espionage. After the elections, National Movement will be strictly responsible for their crimes against the Georgian government and Georgian people!”

Later, Ivanishvili explained why the investigation was not conducted earlier, given that Georgian Dream has been in power since 2012. According to the oligarch, all this time the ruling party didn’t have these resources. Which exactly, the billionaire didn’t specify.

“Many of our fellow citizens are upset that we didn’t properly punish the Nationalists in 2012. Several regime leaders served long sentences. Many of those involved in the regime’s criminal orders were punished. Right now the regime’s main criminal, Mikhail Saakashvili is serving time. However, there was unfortunately no trial of National Movement as one criminal and treacherous group.”

Ivanishvili also claims that after the change of power in Georgia, “high-ranking Western officials defended bloody criminals behind their teeth”. According to him, some outside forces also allegedly called National Movement a radical opposition, just like they had previously called his government.

“Radicalism, this so-called polarization and periodic political turmoils, which for many years greatly cost our country and its economy, were fully artificially imposed from the outside.”

According to the head of the Atlantic Council of Georgia, Batu Kutelia, in the spring Ivanishvili actually laid out an action plan which very clearly reiterated policies and other lines of Putin–the ban of political parties, arrest of opponents, fight against free speech, among others. He believes that a part of this process was the adoption of the foreign agent law.

“He announced all of this and is gradually fulfilling its promises, especially after the falsified elections,” says Kutelia.

Directly before the elections, Bidzina Ivanishvili again reiterated the idea of cracking down on National Movement. In a pre-election meeting in the city of Mtskheta, the oligarch announced that he wasn’t simply planning to liquidate UNM but to build a real Nuremberg trial of his opponents.