With relaxed shoulders, a playful look in his eyes and a leather cap firmly planted on his head, Georgia’s most incisive poet resolutely opened the door to his studio. Despite undergoing surgery in early December, Konstantine Kubaneishvili, also known as Kote, strolled down Rustaveli Avenue, Tbilisi’s main thoroughfare, every evening. There, alongside thousands of other Georgians, the elegant septuagenarian protests against the results of the parliamentary elections won on October 26 by the Georgian Dream party, as well as against the accession to the presidency, on December 14, of the openly pro-Russian 53-year-old former footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili.
The demonstrators are calling for new elections and demanding the release of protesters who have been arrested and, in some cases, beaten by members of the ruling party’s security forces. The party has been in power since 2012 and is accused by Georgian opposition groups and many Western governments of authoritarian drift. The November 28 announcement by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze of the suspension of the European Union accession process inflamed spirits, and garbage cans turned into barricades in some streets of the capital. The poet, an enthusiast of Western literature, doesn’t believe that Georgia can be anything other than European.
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