On June 7, Georgia held its first Parliamentary session after the Parliamentary elections on May 21. In the elections, the ruling United National Movement (UNM) gained 119 Parliamentary seats out of 150, thus holding a constitutional majority by a wide margin. The Parliamentary session was announced only the day before, a very short notice and apparently a tactic applied to prevent larger opposition demonstrations in connection with the inauguration.

Former Foreign Minister David Bakradze was formally elected Speaker of Parliament, marking the transfer of this post to a close Saakashvili ally from Nino Burjanadze, who along with Mikheil Saakashvili and the late Zurab Zhvania was a key political figure in the 2003 rose revolution. Burjanadze announced her last-minute decision to resign as Speaker and withdraw from the UNM party list in late April, due to a controversy over the representation on MP lists, favoring candidates close to the President and not featuring a sufficient number of Burjanadze’s allies. Questions on Burjanadze’s post-election plans remain unanswered; however rumor has it she is considering a political comeback.  

In his inauguration speech, President Saakashvili stressed the need for political unity in Georgia, referring to Georgia’s currently highly polarized political climate. The new Speaker, David Bakradze, subsequently provided a conciliatory message to the opposition, stating that the UNM is prepared to offer them two posts as vice-speakers, posts in parliamentary committees, and a lowered threshold for forming Parliamentary factions, thus allowing both the Christian-Democratic Party and the Labor Party to form factions of their own.

The Parliamentary session turned out to be an almost exclusive UNM event. Two of the main opposition groupings with seats in parliament, the coalition United Opposition-New Rights and the Labor Party, consider the election results illegitimate and a product of large-scale fraud (in spite of international acceptance of the election) and have announced their intention to boycott all parliamentary sessions and if necessary prevent the Parliament from convening. The rally on June 7 nevertheless failed to gather significant amounts of supporters. The opposition had planned the start of their protest rally for June 8, as the parliament was expected to convene on June 9 or 10. The failure to gather a large crowd may thus partially be an effect of the earlier than expected Parliamentary session and the short notice given, but also of a general politics-fatigue among the Georgian public.

The Parliamentary boycott largely represents a continuation of opposition campaigning tactics applied during the fall and spring, to a large extent focused on street demonstrations and protest rallies. While the opposition coalition, in line with its boycott strategy, requested the Central Election Commission to annul its party list on June 9, it is now displaying a split on this issue. Most coalition partners seem to stick with their decision, but four of the MPs elected on the coalition ticket, including party leaders as well as individual MPs, have decided to take up their seats in Parliament, while others are reportedly considering doing so. The two individual MPs, Gia Tsagareishvili and Gia Tortladze, declared on June 9 that they were leaving the coalition due to the dominant role of Davit Gamkrelidze’s New Rights Party therein, and that they are assuming their MP seats. The On Our Own Party has also withdrawn from the coalition and its leader, Paata Davitaia, has stated he will assume his seat. The Labor Party has not yet announced whether it will take its seats or not.

The additional party possessing seats in parliament, the Christian-Democratic party under former Imedi TV anchor Giorgi Targamadze, which has also been fairly vocal in its criticism of the UNM has, while not attending the Parliament’s inauguration, nevertheless decided not to take part in the boycott. The Republican Party, possessing two majoritarian seats in Parliament, has announced a similar decision. The Christian-Democratic Party has instead proposed to unite the opposition around a memorandum, outlining demands from the authorities. The memorandum reiterates many of the opposition demands put forward in January, and which for a period served as a basis for negotiation between the opposition and the ruling party. It also outlines demands for the opposition’s role in parliament, which are quite close to the offers made by Parliamentary Speaker Bakradze during the opening session. On June 11, Bakradze termed the memorandum a good basis for reopening dialogue between the opposition and the ruling UNM, and a meeting on this issue was reportedly held late on June 11 between the UNM, the Christian-Democratic Party, and the On Our Own Party.

However, representatives of the opposition faction retaining a hard line stance and pushing forward with the Parliamentary boycott have termed all opposition members assuming their MP seats or negotiating with the UNM “collaborators” and “not constituting real opposition”. It thus remains an open question whether the reopened talks will develop into broader negotiations and a potential opening for broader political compromise.