Georgian Dream plans to prohibit Georgian citizens living abroad from voting in elections. The planned amendments to the Electoral Code were announced today, November 17, by Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Georgian Dream–controlled Parliament.
Batumelebi spoke with Davit Dzidzishvili, who currently lives in Belgium. Dzidzishvili is a representative of Civil Platform 2025 and a researcher of hybrid warfare.
Mr. Davit, today we learned that Georgian Dream intends to ban Georgian citizens living abroad from participating in elections. What was your initial reaction as both a citizen and an emigrant when you heard this news?
At this point, I no longer have any reaction to what the Georgian Dream authorities do in Georgia. It feels as if they are following some kind of guideline on how to establish a dictatorship. I would say it is a Russian guideline and that they are following what Russia and Belarus have done but even those two countries have not gone this far.
Both Belarus and Russia still hold elections abroad.
Belarusian activists say that polling stations opened in Belarusian embassies are used to detain undesirable activists, but formally, the country still opens polling stations and formally maintains the instrument of democracy, allowing citizens to vote at their country’s embassy, which is legally considered national territory.
Who strips its own citizens of the right to vote? Eritrea does. Only a handful of states in the world behave this way, but Eritrea is probably the best example, because it is a country where no one even asks about the state of human rights anymore — the catastrophe has already happened.
And now Shalva Papuashvili has woken us up to say that we are Eritrea — a country that will no longer allow its own citizens to vote on embassy territory.
What is one of the core functions of an embassy? To represent Georgia in international relations. That is clearly no longer happening, because Georgian diplomats accredited in Western countries are either unable or unwilling to fulfill that function.
Another function of an embassy is to provide Georgian citizens with access to the most basic constitutional rights. Through embassies, your country enables you to vote and choose your government.
With this legislative change, they are telling us we no longer have that right either, and that if we want to vote, we should come to Georgia. I believe they will soon restrict that option as well.
According to the Central Election Commission’s website, just over 90,000 Georgian citizens registered to vote abroad in the 2024 elections, but in reality, only around 32,000 voters managed to cast ballots. Even those people faced numerous barriers — traveling hundreds of kilometers to polling stations, standing in lines all day, and still many were unable to vote.
Realistically speaking, those 30,000 votes were not decisive for the authorities.
The 2024 elections showed that Georgians abroad are largely opposition-minded, but also that the number of voters who turned out did not significantly affect the final outcome. Why, then, did Georgian Dream dismantle even this formal democratic mechanism?
I will answer this as a researcher of hybrid warfare. Georgian Dream needed this move now for two reasons.
First, to finally bury democracy as a process altogether and to openly declare that Georgia does not have democracy and does not need it.
Second, Georgian Dream frequently uses moves like this to distract from more significant issues.
By spreading information today about banning emigrants from participating in parliamentary elections, Georgian Dream is trying to divert attention from two major issues.
The first is an unprecedented money-laundering scheme that they devised and disguised as so-called Arab construction investment.
In my opinion, this is a money-laundering scheme in which the state is directly involved. I am not aware of another country where money laundering on this scale has ever been carried out.
I believe this is a Russian–Arab financial operation. The authorities see that everyone has begun discussing this issue political parties, civil society, everyone.
Most importantly, even Georgian Dream’s own voters have turned against it. Georgian Dream voters may not care that money is being laundered, but they do care that Arabs might buy land.
In my view, ethnicity is irrelevant here the scheme itself is the problem. It is a money-laundering mechanism that will cause nothing but damage to the country.
Georgian Dream failed to justify this scheme even to its own electorate and is now attempting to drown out the topic with informational noise.
The second issue Papuashvili tried to cover up today is the abolition of the administration of South Ossetia, the so-called Tskhinvali region what we call the Sanakoev administration which was, in reality, a Russian demand.
After the 2008 war, Russia had two main demands that it has consistently pushed. One was the abolition of the so-called South Ossetian administration, which formally means eliminating such an administrative entity altogether. The Sanakoev administration was a problem for Russia, and today Papuashvili openly said they are abolishing it.
The second demand is the signing of non-use-of-force agreements with the Tskhinvali region and Abkhazia. I doubt Georgian Dream will move directly on this, but instead, it may introduce the concept of so-called neutrality.
At some point, this topic will be brought into the public discourse. But declaring neutrality requires a constitutional majority.
At some stage, Georgian Dream may consider calling early elections and now they have insured themselves against the possibility that a larger number of emigrants might turn out and actually influence the electoral process.
At this stage, however, I still believe this issue was introduced mainly to create informational noise. This is a tried-and-tested Russian propaganda method: covering up one harmful act with five or six smaller ones.
But stripping citizens of the right to vote abroad is more than just harmful it is extreme.
Shalva Papuashvili claims that nothing changes for citizens living abroad, arguing that they can still vote, with the “only condition” being that they come to Georgia once every four years. How do you assess this statement, given that thousands of mothers have not seen their children for 10–15 years and families remain separated due to the hardships of emigration?
This statement represents the absolute peak of arrogance. You cannot imagine the level of cynicism.
Many emigrants survive on daily wages. Many have unresolved legal status and, in countries with strict controls on irregular migration, are afraid to even leave their homes.
In Germany or the United States, where deportation policies have intensified, migrants look around anxiously every time they step outside, afraid the police might stop them and deport them to Georgia.
And Papuashvili tells these people to come to Georgia once every four years when many have been unable to regularize their status or live legally for 8 or even 10 years.
In reality, Papuashvili does not need an explanation. He knows this perfectly well and says it deliberately — to provoke people, to generate outrage, to get as many people talking as possible. He knows exactly what problems Georgian emigrants face with legal residency abroad.
Now he tells us that people are simply “too lazy” to come back to Georgia.
Leaving finances aside, many physically cannot return, because they know that if they do, they will not be able to go back to the country where they earn money to support their families.
He is simply an insolent man I will refrain from using harsher language.
I have met people here who live in asylum-seeker camps, some with three or four children, sharing bathrooms and kitchens. Asylum cases can drag on for years an incredibly difficult process. And now Papuashvili tells these people they must come to Georgia because he has decided so.
This statement is immoral, cynical, and inhumane delivered today by the illegitimate Speaker of Parliament.
What does it mean when emigrants’ contributions to Georgia’s economy grow while their rights are restricted?
Back in a 2019 interview, Bidzina Ivanishvili said openly that Georgia cannot create jobs, so people should go abroad to work.
Ivanishvili does not want to spend his money creating conditions for people to eat in Georgia. Emigrants should send money home but not so much that they develop a desire to exercise free will. Therefore, this money must also be controlled.
I do not rule out that, at some point, controls will be imposed on transferring certain amounts of money. Ivanishvili does not want free money circulating in the country. In reality, Georgian emigrants are the primary source of truly free money entering Georgia. They are the country’s largest donors.
That is why I believe this will be restricted as well.
Ivanishvili wants a country where people decide nothing and have no desire for change; where he remains permanent, with all resources, power, and capabilities — including the power to arrest or not arrest people.
For legitimacy within Georgia, he relies on administrative resources and socially vulnerable groups. Those who do not like Ivanishvili should live abroad and send money home.
But those Georgians must have no rights other than sending money.
This is the role model Ivanishvili wants to impose on this country.