Employees and employers across Georgia will participate in a warning strike on January 15, calling for a new round of parliamentary elections and the release of the hundreds of people detained during ongoing nationwide protests, which began at the end of November when the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party put the brakes on the country’s EU accession process.

Protest 24, the Georgian NGO organising the strike, has set up an event page on Facebook and is urging fellow citizens to join the action, which will take the form of a walkout commencing at 3pm on January 15 and lasting three hours.

“Regardless of where you work, whether you are a business owner, manager or employee, join us!” the event description reads.

Strike participants will halt work during the three-hour period, temporarily close their doors and stand outside their workplaces in a demonstration of the potential dire repercussions of political isolation for Georgia, such as economic stagnation, unemployment and poverty.

A mass walkout on January 15, assuming it goes ahead, will mark a shift in tactics by Georgia's pro-EU, anti-government demonstrators, who have held near-daily marches and street rallies since the government’s u-turn on EU accession, the largest and most frequent of which have taken place in the capital, Tbilisi.

Protesters hope a strike will help stoke widespread public frustration across Georgia and encourage a citizen-led push for democratic reforms.

The Caucasus nation has been locked in political crisis since the parliamentary elections of October 2024. The country’s opposition forces, along with tens of thousands of demonstrators on the streets, accuse the ruling Georgian Dream party of rigging the vote and forming an illegitimate government, which is steering the largely pro-EU country away from the West and back into Moscow’s sphere of influence, a disastrous and tragic prospect for many.

Since an announcement in late November 2024 from Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that Georgia would be halting accession negotiations with the EU until 2028, cities and towns across the country have seen a wave of mass unrest, with demonstrators calling for a fresh round of elections under international supervision.

Civil dissatisfaction intensified in December when an electoral council dominated by GD officials selected the anti-Western, ruling party loyalist, Mikheil Kavelashvili, to be Georgia’s sixth president, a move many view as marking the subordination of the country’s last pro-Western and liberal institution to the Russia-friendly GD regime.

Over 500 demonstrators have been detained in Tbilisi since the ongoing protest wave began on November 28, with dozens suffering brutal mistreatment at the hands of law enforcement, and many yet to be released.

Several EU states have denounced Georgian Dream’s repressive and violent handling of the current crisis, and the US recently sanctioned GD’s founder and funder, the elusive billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, accusing him of undermining Georgia’s democratic institutions and Euro-Atlantic aspirations.