City hall employees' face-off over salaries escalated in Georgia's Borjomi, riot police had to be brought in

Special forces were called in to stand guard on trucks and buses in front of the municipal council building (sakrebulo) on the morning of 1 March.

The council building was blocked off with only deputies from the ruling Georgian Dream party allowed inside. Other members of the sakrebulo, including its chairman Zaza Chachanidze, were not allowed inside.

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All this resulted from events which took place in the municipal council of Borjomi back in October 2017 after the local elections.

Borjomi’s sakrebulo is the only one in Georgia where representatives of the ruling party are not in the majority. Of the 28 deputies, 13 are from Georgian Dream; the remaining 15 were from opposition parties, 11 of which were members of the Alliance of Patriots.

Despite protests of authorities from the ruling party, Zaza Chachanidze, a representative of the Alliance of Patriots, was elected chairman of the council.

After the elections the city noticeably came to life: stand offs between the pro-government minority and the opposition majority, as well as between the chairman of the sakrebulo from the opposition and the pro-government mayor, have been ongoing for five months.

Yesterday was the first time that all the deputies were able to gather together in one place since November as  representatives of the ruling party boycotted earlier meetings. The situation grew more intense after an item was included on the agenda which would allow for the salaries of employees in the mayoral body of the city to be increased. As the sakrebulo was unable to gather due to Georgian Dream’s boycott, the staff list of the mayor’s office and the wage rates remained unconfirmed, with 125 employees not receiving their salaries for the past two months.

On 26 February a sixth attempt was made to confirm the salaries of the employees. Georgian Dream deputies also came, breaking their months-long boycott. However, deputies from the opposition refused to increase the salaries of the mayor, his deputies and other department heads by 700-800 lari (285-324 dollars), claiming that an increase of 150-200 lari (60-80 dollars) would be enough.

As a result, the sakrebulo almost turned into a warzone: around two o’clock employees of the mayor’s office erected barricades from chairs and locked the chairman of the council in his own office. Zaza Chachanidze was unable to leave his office for several hours.

The situation grew even more intense when opposition deputies Nika Melia from the United National Movmement (Mikheil Saakashvili’s party) and Sergo Ratiani from the “European Georgia” party came from parliament to Borjomi to support their local colleagues.

In the end, the Alliance of Patriots agreed to a compromise: an improvised meeting was held late at night at the sakrebulo, where 17 deputies from both parties gathered, 13 of which voted to increase the salaries.

However, the situation remained volatile even after this compromise. Chachanidze stated that both the previous day’s meeting and the decisions made there were illegitimate. Employees of the mayor’s office barricaded the main entrance to the building and demanded that a meeting be held, claiming that the decision concerning their salaries was in fact valid. They also demanded Chachanidze’s resignation, who, in their words, betrayed his party and sided with the United National Movement.

Employees of the mayor’s office took the barricades down only around two o’clock the next morning. They say that, starting from 1 March, they will be on strike and demand Chachanidze’s resignation.