Melashvili: Banning Parties Is a Red Line for Georgia

According to Giorgi Melashvili, head of the European-Georgian Institute, banning parties is a red line, crossing which will push Georgia further away from the Western world and bring it closer to Russia. He made this statement on the Palitranius TV program "Resume".

According to Melashvili, the governance model now taking hold in Georgia makes Georgia much more similar to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan than to any European state. In his explanation, this model is defined by the banning of parties, the eradication of civil society, and the establishment of single-party, one-man domination.

Melashvili says that talk of banning parties is not about whether they are good or bad political parties. In his words, the issue is that the people of Georgia are being deprived of the right to choose. In his assessment, even by the Central Election Commission's count under Georgian Dream, the parties they intend to ban should have received about half of the mandates, meaning parliament would represent half of the population.

According to Melashvili, banning all these parties violates EU criteria, because a member state must have a pluralistic political environment. In his view, eradicating this environment automatically means that talk of European integration becomes impossible.

He also cites, as a second international aspect, the practice and approach of the European Court of Human Rights, under which banning political parties happens only in extreme cases. According to Melashvili, the lawsuit of Georgian Dream does not meet any international standard.

"Ultimately, as a result of this process, we see the unfortunate tendency that instead of Georgia moving further west, we are increasingly moving toward Central Asia," said Giorgi Melashvili.