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The Georgian Dream (GD) party has unveiled yet another wave of legislative changes designed to tighten its grip on power, ramping up penalties for a variety of offenses—many of which directly target protesters, critics, and political dissenters. Among the most striking changes:

• harsher punishment for “insulting officials,”
• a new criminal offense for a public insult on politicians and other high-ranking officials,
• the transformation of public calls for “violence” from an administrative violation into a felony punishable by up to three years in prison,
• increase in administrative detention term from 15 to 60 days,
• prohibition of protest in any building without prior consent of an owner (it will include universities, theaters, and most of the large public spaces).

These amendments were announced on February 3 by GD parliamentary majority leader Mamuka Mdinaradze following a political council meeting and they were approved by first reading by the parliamentary committees the same day. In his usual combative rhetoric, Mdinaradze framed the crackdown as a necessary response to what he called the ongoing efforts of “Deep State agents” to overthrow the government. He declared that the ruling party requires “the appropriate tools and means to govern the country” and to “serve the citizens.” In reality, these measures seem aimed at silencing dissent and literally curbing freedom of speech rather than addressing any genuine threats to governance.

Mdinaradze clarified that this is just the beginning: “The process will continue until the imposed norms are completely replaced by the adoption of norms necessary for the proper functioning and independence of the state.”

The New Rules of Repression

The proposed legislation includes an array of new restrictions and harsher penalties:

1. No more spontaneous protests: Holding indoor rallies without prior permission from the building owner will be explicitly prohibited. This is particularly significant given that many universities, theaters, and public institutions are state-owned—effectively banning protests on those premises. Understanding the context, universities have been on top of the protests in Georgia since 1988.
2. Steeper penalties for dissent: Administrative offenses such as petty hooliganism, disobeying police orders, vandalism, and blocking court entrances will now carry increased fines and detention periods.
3. Extended administrative detention: The maximum period for administrative detention will skyrocket from 15 to 60 days. Understanding the context, Georgia was constantly criticized by international human rights institutions for long administrative detention periods (used to be 90 days long), and it was the Georgian Dream coalition government that brought it down to 15 days years back.
4. Criminalizing speech: Insulting a public official in connection with their work will become a new administrative offense, giving authorities yet another tool to silence criticism. Obviously, there is no definition or framework for an insult. Under current Georgian reality, anything, including a cynical Facebook post, will qualify. 
5. Jail time for speech-related crimes: Public calls on disobedience to law enforcement officials, refusal to obey the law, and calls on “violence,” previously met with fines, will now lead to imprisonment of up to three years. And again, there is no framework or definition for “calls of violence.”
6. Crackdown on resistance to police: Resisting, threatening, or using violence against law enforcement will now be classified as a “major crime” punishable up to ten years of imprisonment.
7. Harsher punishment for harming police: New aggravating circumstances will be introduced for attacking police officers, state authorities, or their family members. Again, for the context, arrests against activists were always marked by the heavy use of this particular law. We have a handful of case laws where “harming policeman” is defined by the court based on the testimony from the policeman: “I felt pain in my cheek”. Write now: a journalist in pretrial detention is waiting for a five-year sentence strictly for those words said by a policeman during testimony.  
8. Criminalizing vague ‘threats’: A new criminal code amendment will punish threats of attack, incitement or violence against political and state officials, providing broad leeway for interpretation and potential abuse.

What This Means for Georgia

The only tool the government is left with is the power of force. They solely and heavily rely on repressive power. There is no soft power left, no arguments or convincing. The mood of dissent is increasing, and the number of those protesting magnifies every day. Georgia has been on daily protests for over two months now, and there is no sign that it will change without the government freeing political prisoners and calling for new elections.

So, Georgian Dream decided to make peaceful protests riskier as a deterrence. GD grants itself sweeping new powers to detain demonstrators, silence critics, and police online discourse massively. Students protesting in universities? Banned. Actors speaking out in theaters? Potentially criminalized. Calling a regime official a name on social media? That, too, will soon be grounds for punishment.

These measures announced just one day after peaceful demonstrations on February 2, make it clear that GD is not simply reacting to threats—it is preemptively rewriting the rulebook to eliminate any kind of resistant speech. GD’s ominous warning that “there will be a continuation” suggests that this is only the first phase of an escalating crackdown.

In essence, GD is laying the legal foundation for something much bigger: a system in which opposition is discouraged and criminalized.