Day: January 9, 2025

US media reported that the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ is going to Congress as Salome Zourabichvili has accepted an invitation to attend president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Fox News reported that the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’, which prohibits recognition of the Georgian Dream government, was to be introduced in the US Congress on 8 January.

However, as of 9 January, the proposed legislation has not appeared on the congressional website.

The act is the latest in a series of decisions and statements that highlight the deterioration of relations between the US and the Georgian Dream government.

According to Fox News, which has obtained a copy of the proposed bill,  the legislation would prohibit the recognition or normalisation of relations ‘with any Government of Georgia that is led by Bidzina Ivanishvili or any proxies due to the Ivanishvili regime’s ongoing crimes against the Georgian people’.

‘Ivanishvili regime must remain isolated’

The bill states that ‘no federal official or employee may take any action, and no Federal funds may be made available, to recognize or otherwise imply, in any manner, United States recognition of Bidzina Ivanishvili or any government in Georgia’.

The bill has two sponsors: Republican Representative Joe Wilson and Democratic Representative Steve Cohen. Both are outspoken critics of Georgian Dream.

‘Sanctioned oligarch Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party has now become a tool of Putin’, Cohen, who coined the name of the bill, told Fox News.

‘They falsified the October election and illegally picked a pliable president’, he said, adding that ‘Until it agrees to free and fair elections, the Ivanishvili regime must remain fully isolated by all democratic governments’.

Another author of the bill, Joe Wilson, is also the author of the ‘Assad Regime Anti-Normalization Act’, which was passed in February 2024. This act prohibited recognition or normalization of relations with the now-toppled Bashar al-Assad government in Syria. The bill was signed into law by President Joe Biden last month.

‘We will pursue the same policy with the Ivanishvili regime’, Rep. Wilson told Fox News while comparing the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ to the anti-Assad Act.

Georgian Dream still has yet to comment on the introduction of the new will, but in its lengthy statement published yesterday, the ruling party fiercely attacked its international critics, referring to Wilson as a ‘degraded politician with zero political culture’.

As Fox News noted, while it is the US president’s prerogative to recognise a government or leader, US lawmakers point to past precedents when Congress refused to recognise regimes it considered to be illegitimate. This includes cases like Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian and Georgian territories, as well as the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states in 1940.

‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ is not the only bill introduced to the new US Congress. Another document, The Mobilising and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence (MEGOBARI, or ‘friend’ in Georgian) Act was reintroduced in the Congress last week. Its sponsor is also Wilson.

The MEGOBARI Act was first introduced in May in response to Georgia’s foreign agent law. It mandates further sanctions against Georgian officials as well as funding for Georgian media and civil society.

Zourabichvili to attend Trump’s inauguration

Besides critical legislative initiatives and harsh social media posts, Wilson has also invited self-declared interim President Salome Zourabichvili to president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration scheduled for 20 January.

During the press conference held on Thursday, Zourabichvili confirmed her attendance at the event, stating that she’s going to have ‘high-level meetings’ there.

According to Fox News, Zourabichvili is mentioned in the ‘Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act’ as well. The proposed bill states that the US shall recognise her as ‘the incumbent President of Georgia prior to the fraudulent elections on October 26, 2024’, and as the only legitimate leader of the country.

Zourabichvili managed to speak personally with Trump in recent weeks ahead of his inauguration. Last month, during the ceremony for the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, she met Trump alongside French President Emmanuel Macron. As she later stated, she ‘exposed the stolen election and extremely alarming repression against the people of Georgia’.

The US-Georgian relations have noticeably deteriorated amid the adoption of Russian-style laws, manipulated elections, the suspension of EU membership aspirations, and violence against anti-government demonstrators by Georgian authorities.

At the end of November, Washington suspended its strategic partnership with Georgia, and in December, sanctions were imposed on the Georgian Dream’s honorary head Bidzina Ivanishvili and other senior officials of the party, as well as on Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri.

Prior to this, Washington had already sanctioned several influential Georgian judges, often referred to by critics as part of the ‘judicial clan’ close to the government. Sanctions were also imposed on Zviad Kharazishvili, the head of the Interior Ministry’s Special Tasks Department, who played a key role in the brutal crackdown on participants of the ongoing protests.

Georgian Dream’s rhetoric has become increasingly harsh towards those countries that criticise its governance and have imposed sanctions due to the backsliding of democracy.

In a lengthy statement published on 8 January, the ruling party attacked the states, institutions, and politicians that impose those sanctions, and referred to foreign critics as members of the ‘deep state network’.

At the same time, Georgian Dream officials have said publicly that they are looking forward to Trump’s inauguration in Washington. They have often referenced the president-elect’s statements claiming that he will fight the ‘deep state’ and end Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, in which, according to Georgian Dream’s conspiracy theory, external forces from the ‘Global War Party’ have been attempting to drag Georgia into from the very beginning.

However, with Trump’s inauguration approaching, Georgian Dream has been trying to balance its stated expectations. In December, one of the party’s leaders, Mamuka Mdinaradze, said, ‘We should neither be hopeless nor place excessive hopes on the period after 20  January’.

The Baku Court of Appeal on Thursday rejected the appeal against the extension of the detention of journalist Mushfig Jabbar, who was arrested in the ‘Toplum TV’ case.

As his lawyer Nazim Musayev told Turan, there are no material or procedural grounds for Jabbar’s detention. Jabbar has nothing to do with the charges of “foreign currency smuggling” brought against him, because the journalist had not left the country for 7 years before his arrest.

The lawyer said that no primary evidence of Jabbar’s guilt has been presented, and each time the investigation motivates the extension of the arrest by conducting an “expert examination” that is not be carried out.

Today, the Court of Appeal also rejected a complaint against the extension of the arrest of another person involved in the case, Ramin Babayev, an employee of the Institute of Democratic Initiatives. A day earlier, the complaints of Akif Gurbanov, speaker of the ‘Platform III of the Republic’, and Ilkin Amrakhov, an employee of the Institute of Democratic Initiatives, were not satisfied either.

The complaint of the founder of ‘Toplum TV’, Alesker Mammadli, was also not satisfied, despite serious health problems.

In the coming days, the appeals of two more defendants in this case will be considered – Ruslan Izzatli, a member of the ‘Platform III of the Republic’, and Ali Zeynalov, a ‘Toplum TV’ journalist.

*On March 6-8, 9 journalists and activists of ‘Toplum TV’ and its partner organization, the Institute for Democratic Initiatives, were detained. They were accused of smuggling foreign currency. Seven people were arrested, and two were placed under police supervision. The defendants in the case deny the charges. Human rights activists recognized those arrested as political prisoners. On December 27, the court extended their arrest until April 6.