“Restricting emigrants’ right to vote abroad is political revenge for the results that Georgian Dream received abroad in 2024. Georgian Dream is fighting not only our compatriots living abroad — it is, in fact, the deprivation of the right to vote and of Georgian citizenship,” said Nugzar Tsiklauri, one of the leaders of “Coalition for Change”, on PalitraNews’ program “Day Newsroom”, responding to the ruling party’s initiative according to which citizens living abroad — just like in local self-government elections — will be able to vote in parliamentary elections only on the territory of Georgia.

According to Tsiklauri, “Georgian Dream” knows that if there is no pressure, terror, bribery, and threats of dismissal from jobs, their real rating will be approximately the same as what they received abroad in the 2024 elections — 13%.

“I believe this is political revenge for the results that Georgian Dream received abroad in 2024. It was 13%, which means that if there is no pressure, terror, bribery, threats of dismissal, etc., Georgian Dream’s real rating is roughly this. When there is such a contrast between votes received abroad and the votes written here, it is obvious that nobody wants this contrast to be visible — and I think that is one of the reasons.

It is absurd to expect hundreds of thousands of people to buy tickets and fly here. This is the practical deprivation of the right to vote — the deprivation of Georgian citizenship — for people who decided 20, 15, 10, or even 5 years ago that they had to leave Georgia, the place where they were born and raised, in order to save their families, relatives, and friends. These people have brought billions of lari into Georgia’s budget, and now they are being told they will not have electoral rights.”

He added that this decision must also be viewed in a wider context.

“We see how NGOs are pressured, how political parties are pressured, leaders are arrested, and how figures from the arts and culture sphere are attacked. When there are 35,000 votes there, 20,000 here, 50,000 elsewhere — Georgian Dream is creating preconditions so that people undesirable to them cannot participate in elections. They are effectively saying, ‘you might be subjected to pressure, so you must come here’ — meaning that if one of our compatriots arrives from abroad and sees the supposedly wonderful life in Georgia, they will immediately decide to vote for Georgian Dream. This is a farce.

Of course the United States and the European Union are the places where we can best protect our rights and where Georgia, by integrating with them, can protect its national identity and democratic freedoms. In return, they offer us Iran, the Arab world, China, and tell us that ‘black is white’ and ‘war is peace.’ Everything is upside down. It is an Orwellian situation in Georgia today — black is sold as white, a communist party instructor is portrayed as a democrat, and the democratic world is portrayed as a violator of human rights. This is the dramatic and tragic reality under this regime,” Tsiklauri said.

When asked whether “Georgian Dream” is preparing for snap or 2028 parliamentary elections, Tsiklauri responded:

“Any elections appointed under Georgian Dream’s rules will be illegitimate. There is a political crisis in the country, and Georgian Dream has been unable to resolve it because elections were falsified and people do not accept this. I do not know whether they will call new elections or not, but I know one thing — any elections appointed under Georgian Dream’s rules will be illegitimate. They will have no legitimacy.

They want to tell someone — through new elections — that ‘we held new elections and here are the results.’ This will happen under conditions where political leaders are in prison, where human rights are violated, where hundreds of thousands of people are denied participation in elections simply because the authorities know in advance how they would vote. Such elections will have no meaning.

Therefore, the policy of non-recognition and non-cooperation remains a fundamental issue for our political coalition. It is clear that there is no sense in participating in such elections. Has anything improved after the 2024 elections in this regard? — On the contrary, there is now talk of banning political parties, and a constitutional claim has been filed. All four leaders of our coalition are in prison.”

“Victory must be achieved before the elections — by establishing fair electoral conditions. If there are no fair electoral conditions, then participation will only legitimize this illegal regime. We do not intend to participate in that. One month ago, we saw a very sad example — two political parties decided to participate in local self-government elections, and the public gave them their answer: Gakharia’s party lost 75% of its votes, and Lelo lost 50%. In this situation, the political winner will be the side that does not betray the fundamental principles declared after the falsified 2024 elections — free, fair, democratic elections. Participation in any process staged by Georgian Dream, which has nothing to do with democracy, will lead to exactly the kind of crisis we have in Georgia today. Without fair electoral rules, there will be no stability, no peace, and no resolution of the political crisis,” Tsiklauri concluded.