Five Parties, One Court, Nine Months

Georgia’s Constitutional Court is hearing the ruling Georgian Dream party’s lawsuit to ban five opposition parties in three sessions in Batumi on 21, 22 and 23 October, and must rule by 24 June 2027. The court’s own hearing calendar lists the claim, registration No. 1979, for oral hearing on the merits before the plenum, the full bench rather than one of its chambers.

The claim was filed by 88 members of parliament, and the five defendants are Unity – National Movement, Coalition for Change, Strong Georgia – Lelo, the Federalists and Gakharia for Georgia, the party of the former prime minister Giorgi Gakharia. RFE/RL reported on 22 October that the court was considering the bid and that opposition leaders have pledged a month of nationwide protests. No ruling has been announced.

Why is this the third lawsuit?

Because each new defendant meant a new filing. JAMnews lists three versions of the same claim, each naming one more party than the last:

The arithmetic matters because of the clock. The Organic Law on the Constitutional Court gives the court no more than nine months from filing to decide on the constitutionality of a party’s activities. Opposition representative Giorgi Sioridze argues, JAMnews reports, that each new lawsuit restarts that period; the 24 June 2027 deadline runs from the third filing. The law lets the president, the government or at least one fifth of parliament bring such a claim, so 88 signatures in a 150-seat chamber clear the bar several times over.

Who can ban a party in Georgia, and on what grounds?

Only the Constitutional Court. Article 23 of the constitution bars a party “that aims to overthrow or forcibly change the constitutional order of Georgia” or to “infringe on the independence or violate the territorial integrity of the country,” as Civil.ge quoted it when the first claim was filed; JAMnews adds incitement to war, violence or hatred to the list. The claim, according to JAMnews, draws much of its argument from the parliamentary commission chaired by Tea Tsulukiani and treats the opposition’s refusal to recognise the 2024 election result as “sabotage.” Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has called the parties “inherently unconstitutional,” Sova News reported.

The Venice Commission’s standard, as JAMnews summarises it, is narrower: dissolution can be justified where a party uses violence or advocates overthrowing the democratic constitutional order, and a peaceful call to change the system or the constitution is not enough on its own. Nothing the court has published says which test it will apply. This publication looked at the German version of the same power, where the court also decides and the threshold is the argument.

Who is on the bench, and how many votes does a ban need?

The plenum, and the statute’s answer depends on how its “full list” is counted. Reports disagreed on the first point. JAMnews, in an account dated 6 October, said the First Board, one of the court’s two chambers, was hearing the case, with Vasil Roinishvili as reporting judge; Sova News said a seven-judge plenum would sit. The court’s calendar settles it for the 21 and 23 October sessions: “Plenum.” The law ordinarily sends party cases to a board, but Article 21¹ lets a board refer a case raising “a rare and/or particularly significant legal issue” to the plenum. The court has not published, in anything reviewed here, when or why the case moved.

The court has nine seats under Article 5 of the Organic Law, and its list of current justices names seven: Revaz Nadaraia, Vasil Roinishvili, Eva Gotsiridze, Giorgi Tevdorashvili, Goga Kikilashvili, Giorgi Modebadze and Sergo Metopishvili. Article 44 says the plenum may decide a case with at least six members present, and that a claim is satisfied if “supported by majority of the full list of the Plenum.” Party bans are not among the matters that need six votes. Counted against nine seats, a majority is five of the seven sitting judges; the law’s text does not say whether vacant seats count, and this publication has not found a ruling that does. Article 21 adds that a judge may not abstain, and that an evenly split vote on a claim dismisses it.

One seat was emptied this month. Sova News reports that Judge Manana Kobakhidze, a co-founder, former chair and former member of parliament for Georgian Dream, asked on 9 October to be removed from the case, citing her political past and her public criticism of the National Movement; the request was refused and she stepped down from the bench. That account is from a single outlet, and she does not appear on the court’s current list. Irakli Kupradze of Lelo linked her departure to reluctance to take part in the ruling, Sova News reports. The court has given no reason in anything reviewed here.

What would a ban actually do?

More than strike five names from the register. Article 23(3) of the Organic Law says a successful claim cancels the party’s registration and can bar people associated with it from founding or joining a party, standing in general elections or holding constitutional office, and can end the mandates of the party’s members of parliament and of other elected bodies. Each of those personal consequences applies only “if a claimant requested that and the request was satisfied.” Georgian Dream’s majority leader, Irakli Kirtskhalia, said in September that the party “would not seek the annulment of the parliamentary and local council mandates held by Gakharia for Georgia,” Georgia Today reported, the same approach it took with the other parties. A “successor party” that substantially repeats a banned party’s goals, activities or membership can also be banned, JAMnews says; parliament’s speaker, Shalva Papuashvili, said in 2025 that the institution provides, in the words Civil.ge reported, “broader opportunities to prevent future unconstitutional political activities by members of banned parties.”

The reach is wide because the defendants are most of the opposition. Four of the five crossed the five per cent threshold in the 2024 parliamentary election, JAMnews reports, with 784,820 votes between them, 37.79 per cent of those who took part. The fifth, the Federalists, did not.

What have outside bodies said?

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 2664 in June by 83 votes to five, with four abstentions, and urged Georgia’s authorities to “immediately withdraw their application to the Constitutional Court seeking to ban democratic opposition parties,” Georgia Today reported. Continuing on the current course, the Assembly said, “would effectively establish a one-party dictatorship in Georgia.” On 19 October the European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand said developments around the case “point to a worrying instrumentalization of the judiciary,” adding: “This threatens fundamental freedoms, democratic pluralism and fair political competition,” according to Georgia Today.

Three days of hearings are scheduled and eight months remain on the clock. The court that will decide has seven judges, a statute that counts its majority against a “full list,” and no published word on whether that list is seven names or nine.