What you need to know about Georgia’s political crisis

Andrew North is a journalist based in Tbilisi and a former BBC correspondent in Asia and the Middle East.

TBILISI, Georgia — It’s not a political endgame story you usually hear: A prime minister resigning to stop his own officials from executing a decision he disagreed with.

But that is, in effect, what Georgia’s prime minister, Giorgi Gakharia, did earlier this week.

A plan by the interior ministry to arrest Georgia’s main opposition leader posed “unacceptable” risks, he said, at a time when the country was already deeply polarized and busy fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The only power move he had left, Gakharia said, was to stand down.

Here’s what you need to know about the situation, how we got here and what it means.

What happened?

A Tbilisi court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of opposition leader Nika Melia, provoking an outcry among opposition groups and expressions of concern from some Western allies.

Melia, the chair of the United National Movement (UNM), has been leading a boycott against parliament for several months. The standoff stems from an ongoing dispute over parliamentary elections held in October, which the opposition says were rigged. The ruling party, Georgian Dream, denies the claim.

With police special forces on standby to detain Melia, who was barricaded inside his party headquarters, Gakharia on Thursday made a surprise decision to resign, citing disagreements with members of his party over the arrest and warning against a dangerous escalation.

The prime minister said he hoped his decision would “contribute to reducing polarization in our country.”

And, in the immediate aftermath, it did: Soon after the resignation, the interior ministry announced it had “temporarily postponed” Melia’s arrest, calling off the police unit.

Afterward, the opposition leader praised his erstwhile opponent’s decision, saying Gakharia’s decision to stand down was an admission “that there would have been bloodshed and violence.”

The U.S. embassy in Tbilisi praised all sides for showing “restraint.”

What’s the backstory?

The arrest warrant issued for Melia — ostensibly for violating bail conditions — is related to a case against him dating back to June 2019.

The government accused Melia of encouraging protesters to break into parliament during anti-government protests that erupted in response to the invitation of a Russian MP to the Georgian parliament. A heavy-handed police response left more than 200 people injured, with some losing their eyes to rubber bullets.

Melia was later released after posting bail, but government prosecutors went after him again after he ripped off his monitoring bracelet in protest against October’s parliamentary elections.

The backdrop of the entire political drama is the deeply divisive question of the country’s relationship to Russia.

After regaining its independence in the early 1990s, Georgia enthusiastically embraced the West, becoming Washington’s darling in the region. (The main road from the airport in Tbilisi is still called George W. Bush street, in tribute to a visit by the former U.S. president.)

But a brief war with Russia in 2008, which saw Russia occupy a fifth of Georgia’s territory, marked a turning point in Georgia’s pro-Western ambitions, denting its hopes of joining NATO.

It also helped pave the way for the current ruling party, Georgian Dream, to win elections in 2012, relegating UNM and other staunchly pro-Western parties to the opposition.

For years, opposition leaders have loudly complained that the country has veered off course. They place the blame for this squarely on Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, whom they accuse of running the country from behind the scenes and cozying up to Russia.

Ivanishvili — who made his money in Russia in the cut-throat 1990s — has not publicly turned away from the West, but the country’s stance toward Moscow has clearly softened, and pro-Russian parties have gained ground.

Opposition MPs noted that this week’s drama coincided with the Black Sea nation marking 100 years since it first came under Soviet occupation. “It is truly symbolic that all this coincides with the tragic week of the Soviet occupation of Georgia,” said opposition MP Giorgi Kandelaki.

What happens next?

It’s not yet clear which faction has gained most from Gakharia’s resignation — or whether it will simply extend the political stalemate.

The ruling party tapped Irakli Garibashvili, a staunch party loyalist who was serving as defense minister, to take over as prime minister just hours after Gakharia resigned.

Members of parliament are expected to vote on a new prime minister and cabinet in the next two weeks. If it fails to do so, the president could dissolve the parliament and call new elections.

In his response to the prime minister’s resignation, Melia said snap elections were the only way out of the current crisis.

For nearly a decade, Ivanishvili’s chief rival has been Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili. But with Saakashvili in exile in Ukraine, and so far showing no sign of wanting to make an Alexei Navalny-style return, the spotlight has turned increasingly to Melia as the opposition’s best hope.

With his rugby-player like build and shaved head, the MP is an unmistakeable sight at opposition rallies and a pervasive irritant to Ivanishvili, denouncing what he calls his godfather rule of Georgia and accusing him of acting in the Kremlin’s interests.

To many in the opposition, therefore, the move to arrest Melia seemed to be an attempt to neuter a potential threat.

Some saw a silver lining in this week’s political turmoil, saying Gakharia’s resignation had exposed the divisions tearing the country apart.

“Seems we’ve escaped becoming Russia again,” Levan Tsutskiridze, head of the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy, a political advocacy group, tweeted.

What does it mean for the West?

As news of Gakharia’s resignation broke, European ambassadors rushed to parliament and UNM’s headquarters, but so far their public response has been muted.

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has been among the most outspoken in his response, tweeting that he was “disgusted by what is going on in a country I have spent 23 years promoting, defending, boosting, helping.”

Previously seen as a beacon of democracy and freedom in the region, there have been growing concerns that Georgia, which has set its sights on applying for full EU membership in 2024, is sliding backward in global democracy rankings. Judicial independence is of particular concern — and an issue at the heart of this case.

The opposition says the crisis provoked by Gakharia’s resignation should be a wake-up call for the West to renew its engagement with a country that has been a steadfast ally.

U.S. President Joe Biden is seen as a friend of Georgia and has signaled he will take a tougher line on Russia than his predecessor, but it is not yet clear whether he can deliver on Georgia’s long-held aspiration of eventually gaining NATO membership.