The bill would also acknowledge Georgia’s former pro-Western president as the nation’s only legitimate leader until “free and fair elections” are held.
The South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million has been embroiled in political turmoil since October’s disputed parliamentary elections, in which the ruling Moscow-aligned Georgian Dream party claimed victory. However, the opposition, including then-President Salome Zourabichvili, alleged foul play.
Tensions peaked in late November when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze abruptly suspended Georgia’s EU membership talks.
That move, decried by the pro-EU opposition as a reversal of Georgia’s long-standing goal of Euro-Atlantic integration, sparked nationwide protests, with the
authorities arresting scores of demonstrators and police using tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds.
‘Georgian Nightmare’
Amid mounting allegations of
democratic backsliding and state repression, bipartisan U.S. lawmakers, led by Representatives Joe Wilson (Republican) and Steve Cohen (Democrat) are set to introduce the “Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act.”
According to Fox News Digital, the website of U.S. private broadcaster Fox News, the act would block recognition or normalization of relations “with any government of Georgia led by Bidzina Ivanishvili [the honorary chairman of the Georgian Dream party] or his proxies due to the Ivanishvili regime’s ongoing crimes against the Georgian people.”
Ivanishvili, a billionaire oligarch who is widely seen as the de facto ruler of Georgia, has faced increasing criticism for spearheading Tbilisi’s current anti-Western and pro-Russian turn.
In December, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Ivanishvili, accusing him of “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation.”
‘A tool of Putin’
Cohen told Fox News Digital: “Sanctioned oligarch Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream party has now become a tool of Putin. They falsified the October election and illegally picked a pliable president.
The United States cannot and will not recognize this illegitimate government. The Georgian Nightmare Non-Recognition Act will ensure that the United States does not.”
He added: “Until it agrees to free and fair elections, the Ivanishvili regime must remain fully isolated by all democratic governments.”
The bill further specifies that the U.S. should recognize Salome Zourabichvili, “the incumbent President of Georgia prior to the fraudulent elections on October 26, 2024,” as the only legitimate leader of the South Caucasus nation.
The policy would be voided “in the case of the restoration of the Georgian constitution as demonstrated by the holding of free and fair elections,” the bill adds.
Although Zourabichvili’s presidential term ended on December 29 after Mikheil Kavelashvili, a hardline critic of the West and Ivanishvili loyalist, was sworn in as her successor, Zourabichvili and the opposition maintain that she remains the legitimate president.
They claim that Kavelashvili’s selection was illegitimate as the lawmakers who elected him were chosen in what they allege was a fraudulent parliamentary election.
