w<\/a>idely seen as a referendum\u00a0on Georgia\u2019s EU aspirations. The opposition and the pro-Western president have accused the governing party of rigging the vote with neighboring Russia\u2019s help and\u00a0boycotted parliament sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMass opposition protests sparked by the vote gained new momentum after the governing party\u2019s decision on Thursday to put the EU accession talks on hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are fighting for our democracy, to protect human rights, human dignity,\u201d said Rusudan Chanturia, who attended Tuesday\u2019s protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another demonstrator, David Jandieri, said the daily protests must continue until the demonstrators achieve their goal. \u201cIn fact, we do not have another choice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgia\u2019s Interior Ministry said Tuesday that 293 protesters were detained on administrative charges and five arrested on criminal charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has refused to recognize the official election results and contested them in the Constitutional Court, which rejected her appeal on Tuesday. Zourabichvili, who plays a largely ceremonial role, has declared that she would stay on the job even after her six-year term ends later this month to lead the opposition demand for a new parliamentary election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EU granted Georgia candidate status in December 2023 on condition that it meet the bloc\u2019s recommendations, but put its accession on hold and cut financial support in June after\u00a0the passage\u00a0of a \u201cforeign influence\u201d law that widely seen as a blow to democratic freedoms. It requires organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as \u201cpursuing the interest of a foreign power,\u201d similar to a Russian law used to discredit organizations critical of the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Georgian government\u2019s announcement of the EU accession talks\u2019 suspension came hours after the European Parliament adopted a resolution criticizing October\u2019s election as neither free nor fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Monday, the EU reiterated its \u201cserious concerns about the continuous democratic backsliding of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze of Georgian Dream declared Tuesday that the government is willing to open EU accession talks if the bloc ends its \u201cblackmail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI want to remind European bureaucrats and politicians, including those who are artificially hindering our country\u2019s European integration, to bring negotiations to the table, and we will sign immediately, on the same day, at that very moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) \u2014 Thousands of demonstrators in t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3563,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions\/3563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}