The last month of the year 2024 saw large civilian protests in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi and unprecedented media coverage of what was framed as “pro-Europe demonstrations” by the West.

As the clock ticked down on Salome Zourabichvili’s six-year term as president of the small nation straddling Europe and Asia, Western commentators piled on the pressure to declare incoming president Mikheil Kavelashvili illegitimate.

Zourabichvili queered the pitch by refusing to step down despite a clear mandate in the elections for the Georgian Dream party.

The US and Britain played their part by sanctioning officials of the Georgia Dream government.

We held our breath for a possible Maidan-style coup d’etat. In the end, Kavelashvili was inaugurated without a hitch, and the foreign media moved on to other stories.

Constitutional reforms

Turning back the clock to December 2018, Zourabichvili’s inauguration as Georgia’s last directly elected president coincided with the entry into force of a new Georgian constitution.

The change was in response to concerns about corruption in Georgian electoral politics since independence in 1991.

The new constitution mandated that the president assume a more ceremonial role and, from 2024, be indirectly elected by a parliamentary college. This is a similar system used in several EU countries, including Germany.

So, Georgia’s constitutional shift to a system of parliamentary democracy was not inconsistent with what happens in most countries of Europe. Nor had Zourabichvili protested this change of constitutional arrangements before the spring of 2024.

The new constitution also included provisions to introduce full proportional representation to elections and electronic voting, which were widely acclaimed at the time by opposition groups.

Fast forward to 2024. Georgia Dream won the October 26 parliamentary elections under this system with 54 percent of........

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