Just recently, a new political party with the high-sounding name Georgia First (“Snachala Gruziya”) emerged in Georgia. Its founder is a man who for a long time represented the legal interests of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.
Neither liberals nor conservatives, but centre-right. This is exactly how the new political force positions itself. Its founder and chairman is Victor Kipiani, a former lawyer for Bidzina Ivanishvili and head of the GeoCase think tank. Kipiani himself stated that the creation of the party is a “formal response to the expectations that have formed in society.”
The centre-right are proponents of the free market, private enterprise, and tax cuts, but without extremes, preserving basic state social support. They declare that in public life they stand for law, order, and family values, advocating for gradual change over abrupt revolutions. Notably, in the country’s highly polarized political landscape, this niche appears unoccupied at the very least, and at best, a precise calculation.
A fitting team has been assembled around this vision. At the founding congress, a political council was elected, comprising prominent diplomats and security experts. Among them, for example, is Major General Vakhtang Kapanadze, who twice headed the General Staff of the Georgian Armed Forces, served as an advisor to President Mikheil Saakashvili, and holds military decorations from Georgia, Ukraine, and Germany. Another is senior career diplomat Valeri Chechelashvili, a former Minister of Finance, former Georgian Ambassador to Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova, and head of the Georgian Strategic Analysis Center (GSAC).
The audit commission includes, for example, journalist Vasil Ivanov-Chikovani, who, while working for the Public Broadcaster, risked calling on the audience to show solidarity with Mzia Amaglobeli, a journalist arrested for slapping a police officer.
But, undoubtedly, the main face of the new project remains Victor Kipiani himself. His association with Bidzina Ivanishvili began in the early 2010s. Kipiani worked as the billionaire’s lawyer during his entry into politics. In 2022, Kipiani burst into the Georgian media space, this time as the chief representative of Ivanishvili’s interests in his legal battle with the Swiss bank Credit Suisse.
However, in March 2023, the lawyer openly criticized the “foreign agents” law, stating that it was causing colossal damage to Georgia’s relations with the West. In response, the ruling party officially announced that Ivanishvili was terminating all cooperation with Kipiani.
At the time, against the backdrop of this high-profile split, the lawyer was asked if he was considering a political career. Kipiani limited himself to a philosophical “never say never.” Well, it is now clear that this was not just a figure of speech.
