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Georgia’s Constitutional Court in Batumi will begin hearings on Wednesday in a case seeking to ban five opposition parties. Four of the parties together won 784,820 votes, or 37.79%, in the latest nationwide elections, held in 2024.
The ruling Georgian Dream party and two allied groups in Georgia’s parliament filed the case, AnewZ reports. If the court rules in their favor, all opposition parties that surpassed the 5% electoral threshold in 2024 could be forced to cease operating.
The petition, filed in September, accuses United National Movement, Coalition for Change, Strong Georgia – Lelo, For Georgia and the Federalists of consistently denying the legitimacy of Georgia’s current government and ruling party since 2016.
The plaintiffs say the parties’ activities violate Article 23 of the Constitution. They allege the groups have attempted, and continue to seek, to overthrow or forcibly change Georgia’s constitutional order.
The petition cites the parties’ refusal to recognize the legitimacy of elected state bodies and officials, as well as protests linked to them, as evidence.
The petition cites elections and 2019 events
United National Movement, Coalition for Change, Strong Georgia – Lelo and For Georgia cleared the 5% threshold in the 2024 parliamentary elections. Citing alleged electoral fraud, the four groups rejected the results and refused to take up their seats in parliament. Some later reversed their position and accepted 12 seats in Georgia’s parliament in October 2025.
The petition also refers to an incident in June 2019. It alleges that United National Movement and other parties closely linked to it stormed the Georgian parliament building. United National Movement has denied the allegation.
The plaintiffs also claim that six attempts to overthrow or forcibly change Georgia’s constitutional order took place between 2019 and 2025. Another section of the petition draws attention to the record of United National Movement, which was in power from 2004 to 2012, human rights violations recorded in prisons, and the war with Russia in August 2008.
Although much of the document focuses on United National Movement, the plaintiffs argue that the five parties should be treated as a single alliance rather than separate entities because of their shared positions.
Parties facing a ban
The five political groups targeted by the ban bid are among Georgia’s main opposition forces and support the country’s integration with Europe.
United National Movement is an informal coalition of pro-Western political parties. It is dominated by the United National Movement party, which governed Georgia from 2004 to 2012. The party came to power under imprisoned former President Mikheil Saakashvili following widespread protests and the Rose Revolution, which followed disputed parliamentary elections in 2003.
While in power, the party focused on tackling corruption, pursuing free-market economic policies and orienting the country’s foreign policy toward the West. After the 2008 war with Russia and a scandal over the mistreatment of prisoners in Georgian jails, United National Movement lost the 2012 parliamentary elections to Georgian Dream.
Coalition for Change is an informal alliance of several pro-Western liberal parties. Formed ahead of the 2024 parliamentary elections, it won the second-largest share of the vote after Georgian Dream, with 11%. Most of the coalition’s leaders were previously associated with United National Movement, while its parties had split from the movement at different times. All four leaders representing the coalition in the 2024 elections were later arrested or held in pretrial detention.
Former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia founded For Georgia in 2021. He resigned as prime minister and left Georgian Dream in protest at the arrest of Nika Melia, then head of United National Movement, who was accused of organizing violence during the 2019 protests. Those protests culminated in an attempt to storm the parliament building.
The party cleared the threshold to enter parliament in the 2024 elections. It initially refused to take up its seats but later changed its decision. In November 2025, Gakharia was charged in absentia. He is accused of ordering the violent dispersal of protesters outside parliament during the 2019 demonstrations, when he was Georgian Dream’s interior minister. Those events are also cited in the case against For Georgia.
Strong Georgia – Lelo is a coalition of liberal, pro-Western parties formed ahead of the 2024 elections. It won 8.8% of the vote and was also Georgian Dream’s main rival in the 2025 local elections, receiving 6.74%.
The Federalists are a pro-European party that advocates decentralization in Georgia. The group did not participate in the 2024 parliamentary elections.
Political background to the bid
During the 2024 parliamentary election campaign, Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder and honorary chairman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, threatened to ban United National Movement. Addressing supporters in Kutaisi that year, he said: “After securing a constitutional majority, we will ban United National Movement and its satellite or successor parties, and hold them accountable under the law for war crimes committed against our own people.”
In February 2025, Georgian Dream established a parliamentary commission to investigate the record of the United National Movement government from 2003 to 2012. The commission was led by Tea Tsulukiani, a lawmaker from the party.
In August that year, the commission published a 463-word report accusing the United National Movement government of torture, human rights violations, killings, violence, corruption and endangering Georgia’s territorial integrity.
Mamuka Mdinaradze, then Georgian Dream’s parliamentary leader, said in March 2025 that the commission’s findings would be used as grounds to ban United National Movement and other political groups. “It is already clear that the final opinion of the parliamentary temporary investigative commission will provide a solid basis for appealing to the Constitutional Court of Georgia regarding the unconstitutional status of United National Movement and its satellite parties,” he said, according to Interpress News.
In September, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze linked the initiative to ban some political parties to efforts to prevent foreign interference in the country’s political system. He said: “We promised voters that we would neutralize the network of foreign agents in our country, and we are delivering on that promise in practice… This is not opposition at all; in fact, it is a network of foreign agents.”
Representatives of the targeted parties will present their positions during the three-day hearings. Giorgi Sioridze, a member of Strong Georgia – Lelo, called the attempt to ban the parties an attack on Georgia’s constitutional order and urged the country’s Public Defender to issue a legal position on the case.
Sioridze said on October 19 that the Public Defender should engage in the process within the scope of the office’s mandate and provide a legal opinion assessing whether restricting citizens’ political rights is constitutional and what consequences it could have, according to Georgia’s Public Broadcaster.
United National Movement member Lasha Parulava said in April that the initiative showed the “active continuation” of the dismantling of democracy. Another party member, Levan Bejashvili, said there was no hope for impartial justice, alleging that Georgian Dream controlled the composition of the Constitutional Court.
The Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, which advises on constitutional matters, criticized amendments adopted by the Georgian parliament in 2025 that expanded the Constitutional Court’s powers to ban political parties. In a report published in October, the commission said changes that would prevent people linked to banned political groups from joining parties or holding office in the future raised “serious concerns” under international human rights standards.
Seven judges will hear the case over three consecutive days at Georgia’s Constitutional Court. Eight judges were initially expected to hear it, but Judge Manana Kobakhidze abruptly resigned last week.
Kobakhidze, a founding member of Georgian Dream and a former lawmaker from the party, had asked to be recused because of her past political activity and criticism of United National Movement. The other judges rejected her request on October 12, and Kobakhidze resigned two days later.
After the hearings conclude on Friday, the seven judges must issue a ruling in the case by June 24, 2027.
