The “Arrest-Our-Own” Show: How Georgian Dream’s Stage-Managed Purge Paves the Road Back to Moscow

On October 28, Georgian Dream (GD) asked the Constitutional Court to ban three opposition forces — UNM, Akhali/Coalition for Change, and Strong Georgia/Lelo. The Speaker spelled out a sweeping theory of “unconstitutionality,” while hinting other pro-Western groups could be next. In plain language: the ruling party has opened a legal path to a de-facto one-party system. The Court has up to nine months to rule.

Ten days earlier, the government raided the homes of Irakli Gharibashvili, Grigol Liluashvili, and Otar Partskhaladze, boasting of millions in cash and valuables seized. Then, on October 24, prosecutors charged former PM Gharibashvili with large-scale money laundering; the court set ₾1 million bail, took his passport, and barred him from travel. He was not jailed. Authorities say he admitted receiving illicit income while in office. Meanwhile, associates of ex-SSG chief Liluashvili were the ones actually detained. As of October 30, there’s no public indicationthat either Liluashvili or Partskhaladze themselves have been arrested. This is the anatomy of a performative purge: loud raids, lenient outcomes for insiders, and cuffs for the understudies. 

Why these “arrests” look engineered for optics

1) Timing that screams damage control. The crescendo (raids → charges) lands days before GD’s dramatic bid to outlaw the opposition. It creates a made-for-TV storyline: “we enforce the law against our own, so banning them is principled, not political.” The sequencing is the message.

2) The principals vs. the proxies. The only truly swift arrests so far are of people around Liluashvili — not Liluashvili — and not Partskhaladze. That’s classic political theater: signal toughness without actually shredding the ruling network’s core.

3) Soft landing for the VIP. Gharibashvili, the one marquee name who was charged, walked out on bail the same day; no pre-trial detention, no perp-walk narrative after the court hearing. For a case advertised as seismic (remember the headlines about $6.5 million in cash), the preventative measures were remarkably cushioned.

4) A sanctioned shadow still in the frame. Partskhaladze has been under U.S. (2023) and now UK (Sept 2025) sanctions for his FSB-linked influence operations. If this is a real house-cleaning, why has the system long protected the one figure Western governments name as a conduit for Russian leverage? Because this swerve isn’t about rule of law — it’s about narrative management.

5) The rumor lag makes the “find” even fishier. For months, Tbilisi’s grapevine buzzed about a looming Gharibashvili arrest. Yet when the curtain finally went up, authorities conveniently “discovered” millions in cash and gold still sitting around. If he’d truly been under serious scrutiny all this time, why was a haul that conspicuous left untouched? Either surveillance was laughably lax or the spectacle was curated for cameras — both scenarios scream optics over justice.

The strategic goal: manufacture moral equivalence, then outlaw the opposition

GD is trying to erase the line between authoritarian power and pro-Western dissent by claiming the opposition “threatens the constitutional order.” Outside observers aren’t buying it: PACE monitors have already warned that this move to ban parties is profoundly troubling for Georgian democracy. This is not security policy; it’s regime consolidation.

The bigger trajectory: alienate the West, drift to Russia

Over the last two years, Georgia’s relationship with the West has visibly deteriorated — U.S. sanctions and visa banshave targeted individuals tied to crackdowns and democratic backsliding. In parallel, reporting notes deepening ties with Russia since 2022, justified by GD as “keeping peace.” The party insists it’s still pro-EU, but its actions — from a “foreign agents” agenda to banning the opposition — speak the language of post-Soviet managed democracy, not European pluralism.

Bottom line

The “we arrest our own” spectacle is not a conversion to equal justice. It’s a script: raid the VIPs, charge one, jail the lieutenants, then wield the performance to justify erasing competitors. If the Constitutional Court green-lights GD’s lawsuit, Georgia’s Western path won’t just stall — it will U-turn, and the country will slide into a Russian-style system where elections happen, but alternation of power does not.