Riot Police Move In on Georgia Election-Reform Protesters
Georgia Ruling Party Denounces Protests, Rejects Ballot Reforms
(Bloomberg) -- Riot police with water cannon moved to disperse protesters outside parliament in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, after the country’s ruling party said it won’t revive efforts to reform the voting system before 2020 elections.
Officers on Monday removed tents and cleared away demonstrators seeking to block entrances to parliament in support of their demands for a new fully proportional voting system. Water cannon were deployed against protesters in the city’s main Rustaveli Avenue as police dragged away activists.
Lawmakers last week failed to pass constitutional amendments to introduce the new voting system for next October’s elections, sparking protests that swelled to thousands of people on Sunday. Only 101 lawmakers supported the reforms, too few to vote them through, even though they were proposed by the ruling Georgian Dream’s billionaire leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili. He said he was “disappointed” after the vote, which protesters say they refuse to believe.
“We don’t plan to discuss any new initiatives for the electoral system in the near future,” Kakha Kaladze, Georgian Dream’s secretary general and the mayor of Tbilisi, told reporters earlier Monday, when he also warned that “if destructive actions continue we will take action” against the protesters.
The “unexpected halting” of the planned changes has “increased mistrust and heightened tensions between the ruling party and other political parties and civil society,” the U.S. and European Union missions to the Caucasus republic said in a joint statement Sunday. “We consider it essential to immediately work to restore trust through a calm and respectful dialogue.”
Kaladze accused demonstrators of being linked to former President Mikheil Saakashvili’s opposition party and said they were seeking to destabilize Georgia. Georgian Dream proposed the changes to the electoral system after clashes between police and demonstrators during anti-government protests in June.
To contact the reporter on this story: Helena Bedwell in Tbilisi at hbedwell@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin
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