2024 in review: when Georgia rebelled against freeze on talks to Join EU

Thousands gathered in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to protest the Russian-leaning Georgian Dream government's decision to suspend talks to join the EU for the next four years.

Riot police fired water canons at the crowds who descended on parliament and were lobbing fireworks at the building.

Georgian Dream won the parliamentary elections at the end of October in a hotly contested result.

The ultra-conservative and increasingly authoritarian party maintained it got 54% of the vote, despite polls prior to the election predicting 40%.

President Salome Zourabichvili, who is pro-EU, told Reuters after the freeze on the talks, that she wanted European countries to challenge the election result and demand a re-run.

Zourabichvili herself refused to recognize the result, saying she believed the country had been targeted by "a Russian special operation," The Guardian reported.

“They stole your vote and tried to steal your future. But no one has the right to do that, and you will not allow it,” Zourabichvili told the demonstrators who held EU and Georgian flags in protests that took place in the wake of the election result late October.

Opposition leaders told the October rally that they were demanding new elections and refusing to take up their seats in parliament in protest.

Georgian Dream is now in its fourth term governing a population which overwhelmingly aspires to join the EU with 80% in favor.

Until recently, Georgian Dream claimed to share this aspiration while implementing policies that would guarantee failure to fulfil the democratic conditions for membership.

On the eve of the elections, multi-billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who bankrolls Georgian Dream, told thousands of supporters in Tbilisi’s Liberty Square “We choose peace, not war,” the BBC reports, in reference to the Ukraine war and Georgian Dream's determination to stay out of it.

An oligarch who made his money in Russia, Ivanishvili is considered the most powerful man in Georgia with the clout to tilt it towards Russia, despite not being an elected politician.

Georgian ex-ambassador to the EU Natalie Sabadnadze has said that Georgian Dream appears to be looking to mirror Hungary’s Viktor Orban-style of government, while painting themselves as the party of peace.