New Political Centre – Girchi
New Political Centre – Girchi is a right-libertarian political party in Georgia. It was founded in 2015 by dissenting members of United National Movement, and was initially led by co-founder Zurab Japaridze until 2018. Since then Iago Khvichia has served as the party's chairman.
The party first entered parliament in 2020 with four deputies, with help of the lowered threshold. Internal disagreements during the 2020–2021 Georgian political crisis and a scandal involving Iago Khvichia's remarks defending a suspect arrested for purchasing and watching child pornography triggered Japaridze's departure from the party, with him setting up Girchi - More Freedom. The party failed to return in parliament in the 2024 Georgian parliamentary election.
Girchi is a proponent of free market, small government and deregulation and is against most forms of taxation. The party supports drug liberalization, legalization of sex work, the abolition of military conscription and is in favor of gun rights and unrestricted freedom of speech. Girchi has been called a "youth-based right-wing party". Some of the main achievements of the party are the legalization of cannabis in Georgia, for both recreational and medical purposes.
History
Early years (2015–2020)
Foundation
The origins of Girchi date back to May 2015 when four members of Parliament, Zurab Japaridze, Goga Khachidze, Pavle Kublashvili, and Giorgi Meladze, left the opposition United National Movement party to establish a "new political centre". Japaridze criticized the party for "failing to renew itself", hinting at the continued influence of former President Mikheil Saakashvili in the organization's internal affairs. Japaridze's departure was seen as the first time when the party's high-profile member quit.The first chairman of the party was Zurab Japaridze. Girchi opened its first office in Kutaisi on 5 November 2015 and officially founded as a political party on 16 April 2016. Within the first months of its creation, Girchi became one of the best-funded parties in Georgia, surpassing the fundraising numbers of even the ruling Georgian Dream party.
Parliamentary activities
In March 2016, Japaridze proposed an amendment to the Military Obligation and Service Act that would have abolished conscription. However, the bill failed in the committees due to opposition by the ruling Georgian Dream party and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In March 2016, MP Goga Khachidze introduced a marijuana decriminalization bill. In May 2016, he additionally proposed a series of amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Police Act that would ban the law enforcement's discretionary power to require drug testing. However, both bills failed in the committee hearings. Another legislation proposed in November 2016 would have repealed Article 45 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, effectively legalizing cannabis in Georgia, however, the bill was not considered before the convocation's term ended. The party's voted against a bill that increased the threshold for the Constitutional Court to issue rulings to two-thirds of the court instead of a simple majority.2016 parliamentary election
To increase its political perspectives, Girchi joined forces during the 2016 parliamentary election with other centre-right parties, including New Georgia and New Rights, forming the New Choice coalition. That electoral bloc eventually joined the State for the People coalition, a well-financed bloc led by opera singer Paata Burchuladze, with Japaridze calling for "common ground" between pro-Western political parties. The SFP bloc's campaign platform was centred around promoting individual and economic liberties and a pro-Western foreign policy.Though Girchi had five of its nominees included in the bloc's electoral list it withdrew from the coalition two weeks before Election Day and removed its nominees from SFP's list after Japaridze accused the bloc of "blackmailing" the party. Despite abstaining from the 2016 election and losing its four MPs whose terms ended that year, Girchi vowed to stay active and fight for its ideology. Pavle Kublashvili, one of Girchi's founding MPs, left the party and politics shortly after the election.
2017 local elections
In 2017, the party proposed a nationwide referendum to be held at the same time as the 2017 local elections on narcotic decriminalization, though the proposal was rejected by the government. Later, the party made the decision to not take part in the local elections, protesting what it claimed were fraudulent submissions of party registration petition signatures by other political organizations. In an example of political activism, the party submitted 28,000 fake petition signatures, which the Central Election Commission claimed to have verified all in one day.2018 presidential election
In 2018, Zurab Japaridze was the party's nominee in the 2018 presidential election, running on a platform of what he referred to as "More Freedom". He challenged what he called the "centers of political power", including the Georgian Orthodox Church, the banking system, the government of Georgia, and the political opposition. His campaign pledges included doubling defense spending by 2024 while abolishing military conscription, pardoning people serving drug-related prison sentences, streaming ministerial meetings on social media platforms, and vetoing "every bill that limits freedom". Libertarian attorney Iago Khvichia became the party's chairman.Japaridze's campaign efforts were notable for their unorthodox and innovative strategies, many of which were done in an attempt to gather media attention. He legally changed his name to "Zurab Girchi Japaridze" and he promoted his campaign on the pornographic website PornHub. His campaign refused monetary donations and he reportedly raised only 33 GEL throughout his campaign, largely relying on non-monetary contributions. Most of the campaigning was centered online, trying to reach the youth through social media platforms. Days before the election, Japaridze hosted the Tbilisi Cannabis Festival, an act of civil disobedience, which resulted in his arrest.
Japaridze won 2.3% of the vote and ended up in sixth place out of 25 presidential candidates. He performed the best in the wealthiest neighborhoods of Tbilisi as well as among the diaspora while struggling in districts with a minority-majority population. Japaridze refused to endorse either Salome Zourabichvili or Grigol Vashadze in the subsequent runoff. In the post-electoral State Audit of party financing, Girchi refused to submit its records, arguing that Georgian Dream had violated electoral law by clearing the private debt of hundreds of thousands of voters days before the election.
Girchi nominated Herman Szabó, a young media manager, for the 2019 special parliamentary election in Mtatsminda District. Continuing the civil disobedience the party became known for, Girchi encouraged voter from outside the Mtatsminda District to register to vote there despite warnings from the Ministry of Justice. Criticizing the alleged voter bribery conducted by the ruling party Girchi openly stated they would bribe voters. Szabó would end up winning 4.8% of the vote, down from the 7.1% the party achieved in the district in the last year's presidential election.
2020 parliamentary election
During the political crisis of 2019–2020, Girchi took part in joint opposition negotiations with the government mediated by the country's Western allies. As such, it was a party to the 8 March 2020 agreement between the opposition and the government, that led to partial electoral reform. Girchi was among the 30 opposition parties that made up the "anti-Georgian Dream electoral coalition" for the 2020 parliamentary election, however, that coalition was narrow as they only agreed to run joint candidates in Tbilisi's eight majoritarian districts and each party presented their own proportional electoral list. Zurab Japaridze was nominated as the joint opposition candidate for the Didube-Chugureti District.Girchi led a campaign to convince other opposition parties to sign various libertarian pledges, including economic, judicial, educational, land, and law enforcement reforms. The party engaged in other forms of activism such as unsuccessfully challenging gender-based electoral quotas in the Constitutional Court and pledging to give away Tesla cars to its voters. The party however expressed doubts about the prime ministerial bid of former President Mikheil Saakashvili.
Girchi got 2.9% of the vote in 2020, becoming the seventh most popular party in the country, winning four parliamentary seats. However, claiming electoral fraud they refused to recognize the results and joined the boycott of the parliament as well as of the runoff elections. Large-scale protests in opposition to Georgian Dream's victory followed with Japaridze openly calling for repeat elections.
Japaridze's departure and the party split
On 4 December Japaridze announced his departure from the party in a move that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty referred to as "unsurprising". Many observers linked Japaridze's exit to controversial comments made by party chairman Khvichia against the criminal prosecution for the possession of child pornography, although Japaridze denied those comments as the cause of the party's split. Later on reports revealed long-standing conflicts within the party over its management style. The party would evaluate the departure of its founder as a "victory against the one-man rule of political parties in Georgia". Zurab Japaridze would create a new libertarian party, Girchi — More Freedom, while the original party was to be led by Iago Khvichia.Parliamentary opposition (2020–present)
An end to the boycott
Throughout the 2020–2021 political crisis, Girchi initially stood out as one of the loudest voices backing direct negotiations with the authorities to end the parliamentary boycott by the opposition in protest of alleged voter fraud, an allegation that the party distanced itself from after Japaridze's exit in December 2020. While originally positioning itself as a potential mediator between the various parties, Girchi also proposed Georgian Dream a deal in which the party would end its boycott in exchange for the government passing one of their proposed bills on electoral reform, cannabis legalization, multi-currency system, school choice, or decentralization of law enforcement. The proposal was not adopted by Georgian Dream.The party sought to reach a deal with the Georgian Dream government to hold snap parliamentary elections if the ruling party were to receive fewer votes than the entire opposition in 2021 local elections. The proposal was originally brushed off by most opposition parties however a similar deal was eventually reached, negotiated by European Council President Charles Michel. The party entered the parliament on 19 April 2021. When the government exited the deal, Girchi remained in Parliament, refusing the calls by other opposition parties to resume their boycott. It additionally rejected a proposal by Lelo for Georgia to form a shadow opposition coalition government.