Georgian ruling party founder vows to ban opposition at final pre-election rally

By Lucy Papachristou and Felix Light

TBILISI (Reuters) - The founder of Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, doubled down on Wednesday on a pledge to ban opposition parties should his party clinch victory in a crucial parliamentary election this weekend.

If it wins a majority in parliament, Georgian Dream will

make opposition parties "answer with the full rigour of the law for the war crimes committed against the population of Georgia," Ivanishvili told a large pro-government rally in Tbilisi's central square. He did not specify what crimes they had committed.

Although rarely seen in public, the billionaire and one-time prime minister is widely viewed as the main powerbroker in the South Caucasus country of some 3.7 million.

Many thousands flooded down Tbilisi's main avenue and onto the central Freedom Square on Wednesday, although the crowd began to noticeably thin as Ivanishvili spoke. He addressed his supporters from behind bulletproof glass.

A senior Georgian Dream MP said before the rally on Wednesday that the party would organise transportation to the rally for a "significant" number of attendees, according to the Interpress news agency.

"I have been a supporter of Georgian Dream since the day it was founded," said Ramaz Giorgadze, who said he had come from the town of Tkibuli, some 150 miles (240 km) west of the capital.

"Thank God that he sent us such a man as Bidzina Ivanishvili," he said, praising the former prime minister's investments in several western Georgian towns.

Following Ivanishvili's speech, his eldest son, Bera, a rapper, performed his 2011 song "Georgian Dream," for which the party was originally named.

Ivanishvili issued his rallying cry three days before Georgians head to the polls in a parliamentary election that has come to be viewed as a test of whether the country returns to Russia's orbit or maintains its pro-Western orientation.

Days earlier, President Salome Zourabichvili - a fierce Georgian Dream critic - delivered a strong pro-EU message to a thousands-strong crowd of opposition supporters gathered in the same square.

Georgia was granted European Union candidate status last year, but relations have deteriorated rapidly since Georgian Dream passed a law on "foreign agents" in May that critics say is a sign it is tilting towards Moscow.

Tbilisi's main Western allies have responded by levying sanctions on top Georgian officials, withdrawing tens of millions of dollars in aid and freezing long-standing security and defence dialogues with Tbilisi.

Ivanishvili has cast Saturday's election as an existential fight to prevent a "Global War Party" in the West from pushing Tbilisi into direct conflict with Moscow - conspiracy theories on which he doubled down in an interview with Georgian television earlier this week.

In the winding 80-minute interview aired on Monday, Ivanishvili accused several opposition candidates of fomenting revolution and chaos in Georgia ahead of the elections.

He also assailed what he called "LGBT propaganda", claiming that in the West, parents force their children to undergo gender affirmation surgeries and "men's milk" is viewed as "the same as women's". A bill significantly curbing LGBT rights was signed into law in Georgia earlier this month.

Opinion polls show Georgian Dream remains the country's most popular party, though it has lost ground since 2020, when it won almost 50% of the vote and a narrow parliamentary majority.

(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou and Felix Light in Tbilisi; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Marguerita Choy)