On September 15, 2025, Elene Khoshtaria, leader of the coalition For Change, was arrested for making an inscription on a campaign banner belonging to Kakha Kaladze. It appears that she is to be charged under Article 187, Part 1 of the Criminal Code of Georgia—damage to or destruction of another person’s property resulting in significant harm.

Pursuant to Article 187, Part 1 of the Criminal Code, the sanctions provided include: a fine, community service, corrective labor of up to one year, house arrest from six months to two years, or imprisonment ranging from one to five years.

Only a few days earlier, a 23-year-old woman, Megi Diasamidze, had been arrested and charged with the same offense for identical conduct.

It should be emphasized that an election banner constitutes campaign material, the removal, tearing, covering, or damaging of which is sanctioned under administrative law. Specifically, under Article 46(7¹) and Article 80(1) of the Election Code of Georgia, such an act is punishable by an administrative fine in the amount of GEL 1,000.

Subjecting conduct prohibited only by administrative law to criminal liability contravenes several fundamental principles of justice, namely:

• Principle of Foreseeability: Legal norms must be formulated in such a way that individuals can foresee the consequences of their violation. Citizens must be able to anticipate what sanctions may follow a given act in order to regulate their conduct accordingly. Where a clear administrative norm provides for a GEL 1,000 fine for damage to campaign material, no legitimate expectation may arise that the act would entail criminal liability.
• Principle of the Priority of Special Law over General Law: It is an established principle of law that where general and special norms are in conflict, the special norm shall prevail. This principle is echoed in Article 16(2) of the Criminal Code, which stipulates: “If an act is provided for by both a general and a special norm, there is no concurrence of crimes and the person shall bear criminal liability under the special norm.” While the present case involves provisions contained in different legislative acts, the norm under the Election Code must be deemed special in nature and should prevail over Article 187 of the Criminal Code.
• Principle of the Hierarchy of Normative Acts: The Election Code provision must also take precedence on the grounds that the Election Code is an organic law, whereas the Criminal Code constitutes an ordinary law. Pursuant to the Organic Law of Georgia “On Normative Acts,” organic laws possess superior legal force.
• Principle of Proportionality: Subjecting an individual to criminal liability for damaging campaign material—whereby one of the potential sanctions includes up to five years of imprisonment—constitutes a disproportionate response. Furthermore, the stigma inherent in a criminal charge and, a fortiori, in a conviction, together with its collateral legal consequences, cannot be regarded as proportionate to conduct whose essential nature and purpose are of a political character.

The arrest of Elene Khoshtaria, undertaken in disregard of these principles, is therefore another manifest instance of the abuse of the criminal process.

Lastly, it must be noted that this case reflects the entrenched practice of selective justice that has characterized the entire period of Georgian Dream’s governance. Opposition leaders and civil society activists are punished for damaging Kaladze’s banners, while Georgian Dream’s paramilitary groups have consistently engaged in attacks on opposition headquarters during and outside election periods, assaults on their representatives, vandalism of property, and other criminal acts. It is enough to recall, for example, the attack on the headquarters of the National Movement on June 1, 2024, when stained-glass windows and other property were destroyed. This and other acts remain uninvestigated to this day, and no one has been held accountable for committing them.