A court in Georgia opened hearings on Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by the government seeking outright bans on the five main opposition parties, in a move civil society groups say presages the beginning of one-party rule in the South Caucasus country, Reuters reported from Tbilisi.

Source: Reuters

The Constitutional Court in the Black Sea city of Batumi will meet for three days to review the suit, first filed by the ruling Georgian Dream party a year ago. The court's ruling is final and cannot be appealed in Georgia, and it must give its decision by June 2027, Reuters said.

Source: Reuters

Civil Georgia reported that the court's seven-judge plenum accepted the case for consideration on the merits on October 13 and scheduled the first hearings for October 21, 22 and 23 in Batumi. It said Georgian Dream resubmitted the claim several times, each time resetting the court's maximum nine-month review period as the party kept adding new opposition forces to the appeal.

Source: Civil Georgia

A 'real threat', or the end of choice?

Georgian Dream, in power since 2012, is seeking to outlaw the five parties on the grounds that they pose 'a real threat to the constitutional order', Reuters reported. 'The ruling is about depriving a large part of Georgian society of genuine political choice and fundamentally changing the nature of the country's political system,' said Giorgi Butikashvili, foreign secretary of the Ahali-Coalition for Change, a party named in the lawsuit.

Rights groups and the European Union, which Georgia is seeking to join, have also condemned Georgian Dream's move, Reuters said. The lawsuit marks the culmination of government efforts to crack down on the opposition since Georgian Dream won a 2024 parliamentary election that the opposition says was rigged.

Georgian Dream says it is protecting the country from opposition figures who it says are trying to seize power and foment a catastrophic war with Russia, which fought and won a short war with Georgia in 2008, Reuters reported. Civil Georgia said the claim is based on the voluminous report of the ruling party's parliamentary commission, known as the Tsulukiani Commission, and noted that two judges quit the court prematurely after the ban bid was announced and three new judges were appointed over the past year.