Georgian Dream’s new initiative, according to which polling stations abroad will no longer be opened during the Georgian parliamentary elections and voters critical towards the party will be restricted from going to polls, is unconstitutional. According to the Constitution of Georgia, the source of power shall be people. In addition, the Parliament of Georgia consists of members elected by secret ballot on the basis of universal, free, equal and direct suffrage.[1]

The political motivation for this change is clear and unambiguous - the support rate for Georgian Dream was the lowest precisely at those polling stations that were opened outside the borders of Georgia. In 2024, 95,910 voters were registered at polling stations opened outside Georgia, of which only 34,574 (36%) participated in the elections. Of these, only 4,628 (13%) voted for Georgian Dream. With the amendments to the Election Code, Georgian Dream simplifies the electoral task and, in a style characteristic of authoritarian regimes, unilaterally changes the election procedures.

After the amendments, immigrants will be forced to come to Georgia to participate in the elections, which is an unfair and infringing decision in many ways. It is clear that Georgian Dream creates an additional financial and geographical barrier for the part of the electorate, the majority of which is critical towards it. It is also important that Georgian emigrant citizens had to leave the country precisely because of extreme poverty and unemployment. With this decision, they will find themselves in an unequal position compared to citizens in Georgia in terms of exercising their active electoral rights, which further excludes them from Georgian political processes. Until now, the rule in Georgian electoral legislation, according to which emigrants did not have the opportunity to participate in municipal elections abroad, but were granted this right in parliamentary (and in the recent past in presidential as well) elections, was based on the assumption that the opportunity to exercise electoral and political rights in elections of general national importance would be guaranteed equally to all citizens of Georgia, regardless of their place of residence. This was a small, insufficient, but one of the important political opportunities through which the numerous Georgian diaspora maintained self-identification and connection with the political processes taking place in the Georgian state.

The contribution of Georgian emigrants working abroad to the stability of the Georgian economy and social situation is enormous. According to the World Bank, in 2024, Georgia was in 12th place in the world in terms of the amount of remittances received per capita. In this situation, it would be important to take all the steps that would lead to the integration of the most important segment of the population into the political, economic and cultural life of the country. In particular, during the 2024 parliamentary elections, the Georgian diaspora had to overcome a number of difficulties in order to exercise its constitutional rights. However, Georgian Dream is now turning the right to vote into a formality at the legislative level. Obviously, the party’s authoritarian goals are incompatible with the country’s national tasks, which was once again demonstrated by the discriminatory initiative to restrict the participation of Georgian emigrants in the elections.