The Wall of Silence 2: A Systemic Audit of Parliamentary Oversight in Georgia

The analytical posture of this report is that of a “post-political systemic auditor.”¹ This framework consciously eschews partisan alignment and advocacy-driven narratives. It focuses on the procedural, the structural, and the functional, examining the Georgian Parliament as a complex system operating under the logic of a dominant-party regime in a high-pressure, pre-election environment. The core task is to document and deconstruct the verifiable patterns of behavior that emerge when this system is subjected to a specific, high-stakes stimulus—in this case, a formal inquiry into an apparent act of executive overreach.¹

The central methodological instrument of this stress test is the “Transparency Log,” a concept integral to the CAT AGI project.¹ The Transparency Log is a public record of all official outreach and the corresponding responses—or, as in this case, the complete lack thereof. This approach transforms the act of communication from a simple request into an empirical measurement. Every email sent to a Member of Parliament and every silence received in return becomes a data point. Collectively, these data points form a dataset that measures the transparency, responsiveness, and, ultimately, the functional capacity of the targeted institution. The “Parliamentary Wave,” the outreach campaign at the heart of this report, was therefore designed from its inception as a live experiment to populate this log and provide an unvarnished diagnostic of the legislature’s condition.¹

This report, therefore, addresses a central research question: What does the absolute and collective silence of Georgia’s ruling party parliamentarians, in response to a well-documented case of executive ultra vires action, reveal about the true state of legislative oversight, the separation of powers, and the mechanisms of political control in a high-pressure, pre-election environment? By analyzing the anatomy of this total silence, this study seeks to move beyond surface-level critiques of political culture and provide a deep, evidence-based audit of one of the most critical pillars of Georgia’s constitutional architecture.

This audit becomes particularly salient when considering the operational tempo of the executive branch in the period immediately preceding the outreach campaign. Field-level observations and analysis of local political discourse from July–August 2025 indicate a significant escalation in the use of state security and administrative apparatus for political ends. The documented replacement of the entire regional government in Adjara and the deployment of police units from other regions with a mandate for heightened aggression suggest a coordinated effort to centralize control and suppress potential dissent in key geographical areas. This context of an executive branch actively demonstrating its capacity for extra-legal coercion provides a crucial backdrop against which the Parliament’s subsequent silence must be interpreted.

To understand the profound significance of the subsequent parliamentary silence, it is essential to first analyze the nature of the stimulus. The catalyst for this systemic stress test was the arbitrary denial of entry to the CAT AGI project coordinator, Miraziz Bazarov, and his family at the Sadakhlo land border crossing on 27 August 2025.¹ While this event had severe personal and operational consequences, its analytical value for this report lies in its clear and unambiguous nature as a constitutional test for the legislative branch. The incident was not merely an administrative dispute; it was a textbook case of an executive agency acting ultra vires — beyond the scope of its legal authority — thereby creating a direct and unavoidable imperative for parliamentary oversight.¹

According to documented accounts, border officials, operating under the authority of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, verbally demanded a “work visa” as a condition for re-entry.¹ This demand was legally baseless, as such a visa category did not exist in Georgian legislation at the time and was not scheduled for introduction until 2026.¹ This verbal pretext was directly contradicted by the official written refusal documents, which cited vague, generic grounds such as “incomplete information,” despite the presentation of a full package of valid documents.¹ This discrepancy between the invented verbal requirement and the opaque official record is a hallmark of arbitrary administrative action, designed to be procedurally opaque and difficult to appeal.

In a state governed by the rule of law, the Parliament is the sole body vested with the authority to create law.² Executive agencies, such as the Border Police, are empowered only to enforce the laws as written and passed by the legislature. When an executive agency invents and enforces a non-existent legal requirement, it usurps the legislative function of Parliament. This act fundamentally violates the principle of the separation of powers, a cornerstone of Georgia’s constitutional order. It is precisely for such instances that the mechanism of parliamentary oversight exists: to act as a check on the executive branch and ensure its actions remain within the bounds of the law.³

The incident on 27 August, therefore, presented the Parliament of Georgia with a clear and unambiguous test of its constitutional function. The case involved a human rights defender whose status and history of persecution were officially documented by United Nations Special Rapporteurs (Communication AL UZB 3/2021), adding an international human rights dimension to the legal violation.¹ The action of the executive branch directly paralyzed two fully operational civil society projects: a humanitarian initiative providing psychosocial support to vulnerable political migrants and a civic-tech initiative poised to monitor the upcoming Tbilisi mayoral election.¹ The matter was not a private grievance but a public issue with clear implications for the rule of law, human rights, and the integrity of the democratic process. The subsequent outreach to Members of Parliament was thus not a plea for intervention in a personal matter, but a formal presentation of a documented case of executive overreach that fell squarely within their constitutional mandate to investigate and address.

Furthermore, the public discourse at the time was saturated with high-profile cases that blurred the lines between law enforcement and political retribution, setting a precedent for the events of August 27. The widely publicized arrest and sentencing of journalist Mzia Amaglobeli, despite the lack of evidence of serious harm and eyewitness accounts of provocation by law enforcement officials, served as a powerful public signal. The case illustrated the state’s willingness to pursue criminal charges against media figures and activists, creating a climate where administrative actions like denial of entry could be perceived as a lower-level, less visible tool in a broader campaign of political pressure.

The systemic stress test was executed through a targeted communication campaign, designated “Wave 1: Mobilization of Georgian Civil Society,” conducted between 4 and 15 September 2025.¹ The methodology was designed to be rigorous and multi-faceted, targeting a representative sample of over 20 of Georgia’s most prominent and dozens of other relevant CSOs.¹ The organizations were segmented into professional clusters based on their mandates, including legal and strategic litigation, election monitoring, anti-corruption and transparency, human rights and vulnerable groups, media freedom, and policy analysis.¹

Each communication was highly personalized, framing the 27 August incident through the specific lens of the recipient organization’s mission. For example, legal organizations were approached with an analysis of the ultra vires violation; election monitors were presented with evidence of direct interference in a civic monitoring project; and human rights groups were provided with details of the humanitarian and medical consequences.¹ Every letter was supported by a comprehensive package of evidence, including the official border refusal documents, a detailed legal analysis, and the UN communication verifying the human rights defender’s status. The calls to action were clear and actionable: to consider the case for strategic litigation or public assessment, and to endorse a draft joint statement demonstrating sectoral solidarity.¹

The quantitative results of this meticulously executed experiment were stark and unequivocal, painting a clear picture of systemic non-response.

The systemic stress test was executed through a targeted communication campaign, designated the “Parliamentary Wave,” conducted between 8 and 10 September 2025.¹ The methodology was designed to be rigorous, multi-faceted, and non-confrontational, targeting a representative sample of over 22 members of the Parliament of Georgia, all belonging to the ruling Georgian Dream party or its closely affiliated “People’s Power” movement. The objective was to maximize the probability of a response by eliminating any potential pretext for ignoring the outreach.

To this end, the campaign employed a “Trojan Horse” strategy.¹ Each of the 22+ letters was meticulously tailored to the specific mandate and public profile of the recipient. Instead of a generic complaint, the communication was framed as a procedural, often technocratic inquiry from a “concerned citizen” seeking to protect Georgia’s institutional integrity and international reputation. For example:
● The Speaker of the Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, was approached from a constitutional-legal angle, framing the executive’s invention of a non-existent law as a violation of parliamentary sovereignty.¹
● The Chair of the Committee on European Integration, Levan Makhashvili, received a technical “case study” on the “law–practice gap,” a key metric monitored by the European Commission in EU candidate countries.¹
● The Chair of the Sectoral Economy and Economic Policy Committee, Shota Berekashvili, was presented with an analysis of the economic risks that administrative unpredictability at the border poses to tourism and foreign investment.¹
● Influential figures with a background in the security services, such as Gia Benashvili, were approached on the grounds of “operational discipline,” arguing that officers acting outside of written protocols represent a security vulnerability.¹

This highly personalized and de-politicized approach was designed to be constructive, offering parliamentarians an opportunity to exercise their oversight function in a manner consistent with their specific roles and stated priorities. Every letter was supported by a comprehensive package of evidence, including the official border refusal documents, a detailed legal analysis, and the UN communication verifying the human rights defender’s status.¹

The quantitative results of this meticulously executed experiment were stark, unequivocal, and absolute, painting a clear picture of systemic, institutional non-response. Of the more than 22 targeted Members of Parliament and parliamentary leaders, zero provided any form of response — not even an automated receipt or a procedural acknowledgment.

Response Rate: 0%

This 100% non-response rate stands in sharp contrast to the procedural, albeit non-substantive, engagement from other state bodies. Formal administrative and criminal complaints sent to the Prime Minister’s Office, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were, in most cases, officially registered and forwarded to the relevant departments for review.¹ This bureaucratic engagement, while not indicative of a genuine will to resolve the issue, demonstrates that a formal state apparatus for processing citizen complaints does exist and was activated. The absolute silence from the legislative branch, therefore, cannot be attributed to a general collapse of state administration. It was a specific, uniform, and collective behavior unique to the political body of Parliament.

This divergence reveals a sophisticated dual-track system of governance. The state bureaucracy performs a function of absorption and neutralization; it processes external stimuli through formal procedure, creating a paper trail of compliance and due process that can be presented to international observers. This creates a veneer of a functioning state. The political body, however, performs a different function: signaling and enforcement. The Parliament’s absolute silence serves as a powerful political signal that the issue is closed, that the party line is unified, and that no substantive engagement will be entertained. It is a demonstration of political will that overrides any constitutional or procedural obligation. The 100% silence is, therefore, the primary finding of this report — an irrefutable data point documenting the complete paralysis of parliamentary oversight and the legislature’s role as an enforcer of party discipline rather than a check on executive power.

This dual-track system is further evidenced by the selective application of legal processes observed in the months following the 2024 elections. While the state’s administrative and judicial branches demonstrated procedural efficiency in prosecuting opposition figures and protesters, they showed a concurrent capacity for strategic inaction or “soft” outcomes when politically expedient. For instance, several activists arrested on politically sensitive charges were later acquitted due to “insufficient evidence,” while high-profile cases like that of journalist Mzia Amaglobeli were eventually re-qualified to lesser charges. This suggests a sophisticated calibration of state power: the bureaucracy can perform its functions to create a record of due process, while the political leadership retains the discretion to modulate outcomes based on strategic calculations — a level of control that renders independent legislative oversight functionally irrelevant.

Table 1: Summary of Parliamentary Outreach Campaign and Response Rate (September 2025) 
Source: CAT AGI Transparency Log, September 2025. ¹ernal conflict.

The unanimous and absolute silence from Georgia’s ruling party parliamentarians is not a simple phenomenon attributable to a single cause. It is, rather, the outcome of a confluence of powerful institutional logics, calculated political strategies, and deep-seated systemic dynamics characteristic of a hybrid regime undergoing democratic backsliding. This section deconstructs the primary factors that contributed to this collective inaction, treating each hypothesis as a distinct analytical vector supported by extensive evidence from the 2024–2025 period and grounded in academic literature on comparative politics.

The most significant and immediate factor compelling parliamentary silence is the existence of a rigid, top-down power vertical within the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, which enforces an iron-clad party discipline.¹ In such a system, the constitutional role of an individual Member of Parliament (MP) as an independent legislator exercising oversight over the executive is functionally superseded by their role as a loyal agent of the party.⁵ The primary duty of an MP is no longer to their constituents or the constitution, but to the maintenance of the party line and the protection of the collective interests of the ruling elite.

Academic literature on dominant-party systems, particularly in post-Soviet contexts, documents this institutional dynamic extensively. In these systems, the parliament often ceases to be a forum for genuine deliberation and transforms into an instrument for legitimizing and procedurally enacting decisions made by a small circle of party leadership, often centered around a single informal leader.⁶ In Georgia, this informal center of power is widely acknowledged to be Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder and honorary chairman of Georgian Dream,¹ whose personal authority is the ultimate guarantor of party unity. Consequently, any independent action by an MP that could be perceived as a challenge to a decision made by the executive—particularly one involving the security apparatus—would be a violation of this unwritten code of loyalty and would carry significant political risk for the individual.⁸

The political environment of 2024–2025 provides ample empirical evidence of this absolute party discipline in action. Following the disputed parliamentary elections of October 2024, the GD-controlled parliament has acted with near-total unanimity on a series of highly controversial and politically sensitive issues. This includes the reintroduction and passage of the “Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence” in May 2024, the subsequent passage of a harsher Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in early 2025, and the unilateral suspension of EU accession negotiations in November 2024.¹ These actions were taken in the face of massive, sustained street protests, widespread condemnation from Georgia’s Western partners, and clear warnings from bodies like the Venice Commission that such legislation was incompatible with democratic standards.¹⁰ Despite this immense internal and external pressure, the parliamentary majority displayed no public dissent, with MPs consistently voting along the party line and defending the government’s position in public statements.¹²

This context is crucial for understanding the silence in September 2025. For any GD parliamentarian, the calculus was simple and stark. Publicly questioning or even formally inquiring about a decision made by the Ministry of Internal Affairs—a core pillar of the state’s power apparatus—would constitute an act of profound disloyalty. It would be seen not as a legitimate exercise of oversight but as a breach of the party’s unified front at a time when it was engaged in what it defined as an existential struggle against internal and external enemies.¹³ The concept of a “free parliamentary mandate,” where an MP is free to act according to their conscience and constitutional duty, is rendered functionally obsolete in such a system.¹⁴ Silence was not a choice; it was the only politically rational behavior available to members of the parliamentary majority.

The internal party logic is not merely theoretical; it is enforced through observable purges and redeployments of high-level officials who fall out of alignment with the central power vertical. The period from mid-2025 onwards was marked by the systematic removal or sidelining of key figures within the Georgian Dream elite, including the former Prime Minister Garibashvili and the Minister of Internal Affairs Gomelauri. These actions, often targeting individuals previously seen as central to the party’s power structure, serve as a constant and visible reminder to all MPs that loyalty is paramount and that even senior status provides no immunity from political retribution. For a parliamentarian, to break ranks on an issue of state security would not be a matter of policy disagreement, but a direct challenge to the internal power dynamics that determine political survival.

Beyond the internal logic of party discipline, the collective silence of the Georgian Parliament must be understood as an active and calculated political strategy: the politics of ignoring. By refusing to acknowledge or engage with the formal inquiries, the ruling party executes a strategy of strategic de-legitimization. This tactic operates on a simple premise: to respond to a critic is to grant them legitimacy and validate their standing as a worthy interlocutor. To ignore them completely is to signal their irrelevance and deny them a platform, effectively erasing the issue from the official political agenda.¹

This strategy is the practical, procedural application of the Georgian Dream government’s dominant propaganda narrative of 2024–2025. This narrative, relentlessly amplified by party leaders and pro-government media, frames all forms of opposition—political parties, civil society organizations, independent media, and individual activists—as illegitimate actors, “foreign agents,” or members of a malevolent “Global War Party” seeking to undermine Georgia’s sovereignty.¹ In this Manichean worldview, there is no legitimate opposition or good-faith criticism; there are only loyal defenders of the nation and foreign-funded enemies seeking to destabilize it.¹⁷

Public statements from key parliamentary figures targeted in the outreach campaign provide direct evidence of this mindset. Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili has consistently framed external criticism not as a component of democratic dialogue but as an “attack on the Georgian people and government” and a form of “coercion.”¹⁸ In a parliamentary address, he characterized the work of the opposition and civil society as a “cascade of attempts to reverse the country’s development, cause chaos, and start a revolution.”¹⁹ Similarly, Tea Tsulukiani, a Deputy Chairperson of Parliament, has publicly asserted that opposition forces and foreign-funded NGOs have “hindered establishing a healthy political system in Georgia” and acted on behalf of “outside forces” to prevent the country’s progress.¹⁵

Within this framework, responding to a detailed, UN-documented case presented by a human rights defender would be a strategic blunder. It would contradict the party’s own narrative by treating a designated “agent” as a legitimate stakeholder. The total silence, therefore, functions as a powerful act of political communication. It is a non-verbal declaration that the sender of the letters, the substance of the case, and the 65+ international organizations monitoring the situation are all illegitimate and unworthy of a response.¹ It is a performance of power that reinforces the party’s narrative for its domestic audience, demonstrating that it will not be moved by the procedural norms of democratic accountability when they are invoked by those it has already branded as enemies of the state.

This de-legitimization strategy is not limited to abstract rhetoric but is operationalized through specific legislative and political actions. A prime example is the creation of parliamentary commissions, such as the one led by Tea Tsulukiani to investigate the “crimes of the National Movement.” Such bodies serve a dual purpose: they provide a veneer of legitimate parliamentary inquiry while functioning as a platform to officially brand all opposition as criminal and illegitimate. The refusal of opposition leaders like Zurab Japaridze and Nika Melia to participate in this commission, and their subsequent arrests for non-compliance, demonstrates the mechanism in action: engagement is framed as treason, while non-engagement is met with punitive state action, creating a strategic trap from which there is no escape.

Beyond the high-level strategies of party discipline and de-legitimization, the decision to remain silent was also rooted in a rational, risk-averse calculation by individual MPs and the party apparatus. The specific characteristics of the case presented to them made it a uniquely and dangerously “toxic asset” within Georgia’s hyper-polarized geopolitical context.¹ Engaging with it in any capacity would have meant walking into a carefully laid narrative trap, providing the government’s propaganda machine with potent ammunition.¹

The most significant toxic element was the name of one of the disrupted projects: “FBK 2.0 (Psy Week).”¹ Although intended as a satirical reference within a specific activist subculture, the acronym “FBK” is inextricably linked in the public mind with the Anti-Corruption Foundation of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. For the Georgian Dream’s propaganda apparatus, which had spent years constructing a narrative that its opponents were agents of foreign powers seeking to drag Georgia into conflict with Russia, this detail would have been an invaluable gift.¹ Any MP who engaged with the case could have been instantly and effectively smeared in pro-government media as a “defender of Russian agents” or a collaborator with forces seeking to destabilize Georgia.¹

This fear of association was magnified by the central political battle of the moment: the fight over the “foreign agent” law, which was almost universally referred to in Georgia as the “Russian Law” due to its direct parallels with repressive Kremlin legislation.¹ This created an acute narrative contradiction. For a Georgian Dream MP to publicly engage with a case involving a project named “FBK 2.0” would have been politically incomprehensible. It would have forced them onto the defensive, spending precious political capital trying to explain a nuance that the government’s powerful media apparatus would have instantly and deliberately erased.¹

Furthermore, the very professionalism and comprehensiveness of the outreach campaign could have been perceived as a red flag. In a climate of intense political paranoia, where the state actively seeks to entrap and discredit its critics, any unsolicited approach from an unknown external actor must be assessed through a security lens.¹ The highly structured, multi-pronged effort, complete with detailed legal analyses and a full dossier of supporting documents, bore the hallmarks of a sophisticated operation. In the absence of trusted verification, it would be impossible for a security-conscious politician to distinguish a genuine appeal from a well-designed state-sponsored provocation intended to publicly associate them with a toxic case.¹ Faced with this uncertainty, the most rational, risk-averse strategy is non-engagement. Silence is the safest default policy. It avoids legitimizing a potential provocation and protects the individual and the party from unforeseen political consequences.

Moreover, the ruling party’s media apparatus has demonstrated a consistent capacity to exploit internal divisions within the opposition, further incentivizing silence as a means of avoiding collateral damage. The public schism within the opposition regarding participation in the October 4 municipal elections—pitting a “boycott” faction against a “participation” faction—was actively amplified by pro-government channels. Any GD parliamentarian engaging with the case presented by CAT AGI would risk being inserted into this complex and volatile narrative. Their actions could be framed not just as supporting a “foreign agent,” but also as taking a side in an internal opposition conflict—an unnecessary and unpredictable complication for a politician whose primary mandate is to maintain message discipline.

A deeper systemic analysis, moving beyond the immediate political calculations, suggests that the Parliament’s silence is a symptom of a more profound institutional transformation consistent with the academic concept of “state capture.”²⁰ This hypothesis posits that the silence was not merely a failure of the legislature’s oversight function but rather a sign that the institution is functioning with high efficiency according to a new, unwritten mandate: to procedurally service and protect the interests of the ruling elite and its associated patronage networks.²³

In a captured state, formal democratic institutions like the parliament are not destroyed, but are hollowed out and repurposed.¹⁶ Their primary function shifts from public representation and serving as a check on power to providing a veneer of legality for the consolidation of the elite’s political and economic interests.²¹ The legislature becomes an instrument for passing preferential laws, neutralizing political and economic rivals, and blocking any inquiry or initiative that could threaten the stability of the patronage system.²⁵

The political and economic landscape of Georgia in 2024–2025 provides significant evidence for this hypothesis. Reports from domestic and international watchdogs have documented a systemic pattern that strongly correlates political donations to Georgian Dream with the awarding of lucrative state and municipal contracts, creating a closed-loop system of political and economic power.¹ Legislation has been tailored to serve specific elite interests, most notably the 2024 “offshore law,” which created substantial tax exemptions for transferring assets into Georgia just as the party’s founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, faced international sanctions and began restructuring his vast corporate empire.¹ Concurrently, the state’s legal and security apparatus has been deployed to neutralize political opponents and suppress dissent, as documented in numerous reports of politically motivated prosecutions and the use of the State Security Service for political control.¹⁶

From the perspective of a captured legislature, the outreach campaign of September 2025 represented a high-risk, zero-reward proposition. The case offered no tangible benefit to the ruling elite or its patronage network. On the contrary, it posed a direct threat by seeking to hold a key executive agency accountable for its actions. A genuine parliamentary inquiry would have risked exposing procedural irregularities within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, creating an unwelcome precedent for accountability, and generating negative international attention—all without any corresponding political or economic upside for the ruling network.

Therefore, the 100% non-response rate is the logical and expected outcome of an institution that is no longer oriented towards public accountability but towards elite interest consolidation. The Parliament is not “broken”; it is fulfilling its new, captured function perfectly. Its silence is a highly efficient mechanism for filtering out external stimuli that are irrelevant or threatening to the core interests of the system it is designed to protect.

The internal power struggles within the ruling elite, which intensified in mid-2025, provide a clear illustration of this captured logic. The documented removal of figures like the Prime Minister of Adjara, Tornike Rizhvadze, and the arrests of business figures close to the party, were widely interpreted by local political analysts not as anti-corruption efforts, but as a violent redistribution of control over economic and administrative resources between competing party clans. In such an environment, where the primary function of state power is to regulate internal factional conflicts and secure rent-seeking opportunities, an external appeal based on constitutional principles is not just irrelevant; it is unintelligible to the system’s core operational code. A parliamentary inquiry would be a useless tool, as the real decisions are made through informal, clan-based negotiations entirely outside the constitutional framework.

A final, non-obvious hypothesis frames the collective parliamentary silence not merely as a defensive maneuver but as a deliberate and assertive form of political performance art, aimed primarily at a domestic audience and designed to project an image of strength and sovereignty. In this interpretation, ignoring a meticulously documented appeal, amplified by over 65 international organizations, becomes a powerful public demonstration of the regime’s imperviousness to the very “foreign influence” it claims to be fighting.¹

This performance must be understood within the context of the ruling party’s central ideological project in 2024–2025: the defense of Georgia’s national sovereignty against a perceived external threat from a “Global War Party,” which supposedly includes the United States, the European Union, and their domestic Georgian proxies in the form of CSOs and opposition parties.¹ This narrative has been most forcefully articulated by the “People’s Power” movement, a parliamentary group that formally split from Georgian Dream but remains in the majority and serves as the party’s ideological vanguard.²⁷ Leaders of this movement, such as Sozar Subari and Dimitri Khundadze, have consistently argued that Western-funded entities are attempting to undermine Georgia’s traditions, faith, and sovereignty, and that the government must take firm action to defend the country’s national interests.²⁶

The outreach campaign, with its explicit references to a UN-documented case and its wide dissemination to international bodies, fit perfectly into this narrative as an example of coordinated foreign pressure.¹ For the ruling party, to engage with such a campaign—even to issue a formal rejection—could be framed by opponents and perceived by the party’s nationalist base as a sign of weakness, an act of capitulation to external dictates.

Conversely, to ignore it completely is a powerful, non-verbal assertion of sovereignty. It is a political performance that communicates a clear message to a domestic audience: “Your international norms, your UN documents, and your letters from Brussels have no power here. We operate according to our own rules and will not be swayed by foreign pressure.” This act of defiance serves to rally the party’s base, reinforce the siege mentality that is central to its narrative, and project an image of a strong, unwavering leadership that is capable of standing up to powerful external forces. The silence, in this view, is not a sign of institutional dysfunction but a carefully calibrated act of political theater, a performance of sovereignty that is essential for the regime’s ideological self-justification and domestic political consolidation.

This performance is complemented by a consistent narrative that portrays any alternative to the current rule as a direct path to war and chaos, a message particularly effective for an electorate with recent memories of armed conflict. Public statements by party leaders repeatedly frame their policies as the sole guarantee of peace, asserting that Western partners and domestic opposition sought to open a “second front” in Georgia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. By ignoring the outreach from a UN-recognized human rights defender, the Parliament performs a powerful act of narrative reinforcement: it demonstrates its rejection of the “pro-war” external forces and positions itself as the steadfast guardian of national stability, a message tailored for its core electoral base in the regions.

The empirical results of the systemic stress test, when analyzed through the multi-factor framework, allow for the formulation of several systemic conclusions about the state of Georgian democracy. The experiment did not merely reveal the Parliament’s reluctance to act; it provided a clear diagnostic of why it is unable or unwilling to act, yielding data that refutes dominant political narratives and offers a foundation for future strategy.

A key insight emerges from comparing the findings of this report with its predecessor, “The Wall of Silence,” which documented the near-total silence from Georgia’s Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in response to the same catalyst.¹ While the surface-level outcome—institutional silence—was similar, the underlying causes are polar opposites. This distinction is critical for accurately mapping the power dynamics within a hybrid regime.

The CSO silence was a silence of vulnerability.¹ It was a rational, defensive reaction from a sector under direct and sustained assault. The primary drivers were a well-founded fear of state retaliation (such as the freezing of bank accounts), severe resource scarcity and institutional fatigue, and a strategic calculation to avoid politically “toxic” issues that could jeopardize their core missions and very survival.¹ The CSO community’s inaction was a symptom of its weakness in the face of overwhelming state power.

In stark contrast, the parliamentary silence documented in this report is a silence of power.¹ It is an assertive, calculated act by the dominant political institution in the country. The drivers are not fear or fragility, but strength and control: iron-clad party discipline that ensures unity, a coherent political strategy of de-legitimizing all criticism, and the confidence of a ruling elite that has successfully captured state institutions and feels no compulsion to adhere to constitutional norms of accountability. The Parliament’s inaction was not a defensive crouch but an offensive display of its consolidated control over the political system.

This comparison reveals a deeply troubling synergy. The Georgian state has successfully engineered a political environment where the vulnerable have been intimidated into a protective silence, while the powerful have been disciplined into a unified, assertive silence. Together, these two walls of silence effectively suffocate public discourse and neutralize the mechanisms of democratic accountability, creating a closed system that is highly resistant to both internal and external checks and balances.

This synergy creates a political landscape where the very definition of legitimate political action is narrowed to exclude systemic critique. The case of Levan Khabeishvili, a prominent opposition speaker, is illustrative. His radical rhetoric calling for a “peaceful overthrow” on election day was largely seen as marginal and ineffective within the opposition itself. However, his subsequent arrest on charges of organizing a coup d’état served to reinforce the state’s narrative that all opposition is inherently revolutionary and illegitimate. The state’s action, while seemingly an overreaction, was a strategic move that retroactively validated its narrative, further intimidating more moderate CSOs and solidifying the ruling party’s control over the boundaries of acceptable political discourse.

The 100% non-response rate from the ruling party’s parliamentarians provides definitive, empirical proof of the functional collapse of parliamentary oversight as a meaningful check on executive power in Georgia. This is not an anecdotal claim or a partisan accusation; it is a verifiable result from a real-world experiment. The “Trojan Horse” strategy, which tailored each inquiry to be as non-confrontational and procedurally relevant as possible, preemptively refutes any claim that the letters were ignored due to their tone or substance.¹ The silence was a systemic, institutional choice.

This primary data point serves as a powerful real-world confirmation of the trends documented in numerous international reports. The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, in its opinions on legislation passed in 2024 and 2025, has repeatedly criticized the Georgian Parliament for adopting laws in a rushed manner, without proper consultation, and in ways that undermine democratic principles and the rule of law.¹⁰ Similarly, the OSCE/ODIHR’s final report on the October 2024 parliamentary elections highlighted a range of issues, including an “uneven playing field,” a “widespread climate of pressure,” and the blurring of lines between the state and the ruling party, all of which point to a weakening of democratic institutions.³¹ The European Parliament has gone further, adopting resolutions that speak of “democratic backsliding,” “state capture,” and an “illegitimate parliament” following the disputed 2024 elections.¹¹

The “Wall of Silence 2” is not an anomaly; it is the practical manifestation of the institutional atrophy described in these external assessments. It demonstrates that the erosion of the separation of powers is not a theoretical risk but an operational reality. When the legislative branch is completely unresponsive to a documented case of executive overreach, it signals that it has ceased to function as an independent branch of government and has instead become a procedural appendage of the executive will.

The most crucial conclusion of this report is the reframing of the experiment’s outcome. From the perspective of traditional advocacy, the “Parliamentary Wave” was an abject failure. From the perspective of a post-political systemic auditor, it was a resounding success. The “Wall of Silence 2” is not a dead end; it is a rich dataset that provides an unvarnished diagnostic of the system’s true condition. Understanding why the system failed is the key to designing more effective engagement strategies for the future.¹

The findings serve as critical intelligence for international actors, including diplomats, donors, and international organizations, who seek to support democracy in Georgia. The data empirically demonstrates that traditional models of engagement that rely on dialogue with parliamentary committees or assume a good-faith adherence to constitutional norms are no longer viable. The Georgian Parliament, in its current configuration, is a closed institutional loop, designed to be unresponsive to procedurally correct external engagement that challenges the party line.

This reality necessitates a strategic recalibration. Continuing with approaches that are demonstrably ineffective is a waste of resources and political capital. Instead, new strategies must be developed that acknowledge the Parliament’s function as a non-responsive political entity. The CAT AGI project’s “Transparency Log” is presented as a prototype for such a new approach.¹ Its value lies not in compelling a response, but in creating an unassailable public record of non-response. In an environment of institutional capture, the most potent form of engagement may not be dialogue, but the meticulous, dispassionate, and public documentation of its absence. This transforms silence from a tool of the regime into a dataset that can be used to hold it accountable on the international stage.

The findings of this systemic stress test have profound implications for the ongoing mission of the CAT AGI project and for any international actor seeking to effectively support and engage with democratic institutions in Georgia. The experiment has provided an unvarnished and data-driven assessment of the operational landscape, forcing a strategic recalibration away from conventional models of engagement toward a more nuanced, realistic, and resilient approach.

The primary lesson learned is that the model of good-faith engagement with the Georgian Parliament, based on the assumption that it functions as an independent legislative body with a genuine oversight mandate, is no longer viable in the current political climate. The empirical evidence of a 100% non-response rate to a meticulously prepared, non-confrontational inquiry proves that the institution is operating as a politically disciplined, monolithic bloc, impervious to appeals based on constitutional duty or the rule of law. The combination of a rigid power vertical, a strategy of strategic de-legitimization, and the dynamics of a captured state has rendered the legislature functionally unresponsive to any stimulus that deviates from the interests of the ruling party.

This conclusion validates the core methodological premise of the CAT AGI project.¹ The role of a “post-political systemic auditor” proves to be not only a valuable analytical stance but a necessary operational one.¹ In an environment where direct calls for accountability are met with absolute silence, the most potent form of engagement is to measure and document that very silence. The “Transparency Log” is therefore affirmed as the project’s central and most powerful tool.¹ Its value lies not in compelling a response, but in creating an unassailable public record of non-response, which itself becomes a critical piece of evidence about the health of the country’s democratic institutions. It transforms the regime’s strategy of ignoring into a dataset that quantifies its lack of accountability.

Ultimately, this audit confirms that the Georgian Parliament, under the control of Georgian Dream, operates not as a deliberative body but as a closed information ecosystem. The internal logic, as revealed by the analysis of local political discourse, is one of crisis management and clan-based power consolidation, where external inputs are filtered for threats and opportunities relevant only to the ruling elite’s survival. The concept of parliamentary oversight has been replaced by a system of political risk management. The 100% non-response rate was, therefore, the most efficient outcome for a system designed to perpetuate its own power, not to uphold abstract constitutional principles.
Moving forward, the CAT AGI mission must build upon this methodological success. The focus will remain on systemic auditing, using its tools not to demand that the system change, but to meticulously document how it actually functions—or fails to function—under pressure. The project will continue to treat the actions and inactions of state institutions as data, providing the international community with a clear-eyed, evidence-based assessment of the political reality in Georgia. The “Wall of Silence 2,” therefore, does not mark the end of engagement, but rather the beginning of a more informed, realistic, and strategically sophisticated phase of the CAT AGI mission.

The analysis presented in this report is based on a direct communication experiment conducted with a representative sample of the Parliament of Georgia in September 2025. This primary data, consisting of the outreach campaign materials and the documented 100% non-response rate, forms the empirical core of the study and is recorded in the CAT AGI project's "Transparency Log".¹

To contextualize and enrich these primary findings, a comprehensive Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) review was conducted. This review encompassed over 1000 public sources, with a specific focus on materials published between January 2024 and September 2025 to capture the escalating political crisis and the operating environment for Georgia's democratic institutions. This included a review of at least 300 sources in the Georgian language to ensure a deep understanding of the domestic political and media discourse.¹

The scope of the OSINT review included:
●       Reports from International Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations: This included publications from the European Union (European Parliament, EEAS), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR), the Council of Europe (Venice Commission), the U.S. Department of State, Freedom House, Transparency International, and other human rights organizations.¹⁰
●       Georgian and International Media Archives: A systematic review of reporting from credible outlets such as Civil.ge, OC Media, JAMnews, Netgazeti, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and major international news agencies.¹⁵
●       Legal and Legislative Documents: Analysis of the texts of the 2024 Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence, amendments to the Election Code and the Code of Administrative Offences, official parliamentary records, and related government statements.¹
●       Academic Literature: A review of relevant scholarly articles and books on parliamentary behavior in dominant-party systems, state-civil society relations in post-Soviet states, the dynamics of political clientelism and state capture, and the functioning of hybrid and authoritarian regimes.⁵

This multi-layered methodology, combining a direct, real-world experiment with extensive secondary source analysis, allows the report to ground its systemic conclusions in both immediate, empirical data and a deep, contextual understanding of the forces shaping Georgia's political and institutional landscape.

1.     CAT AGI database and analysis by beta version of NOUS AGI
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