IT WAS SURELY this 12 months’s maximum fraught tree-lighting rite. Outdoor Georgia’s parliament construction on December 14th, police squared off towards hundreds of protesters, as they’ve for the previous two weeks. Within, lawmakers from Georgian Dream, the increasingly more Russia-friendly governing birthday celebration, had simply elected a brand new president in a vote with unsightly echoes of the rustic’s communist previous: there was once just one candidate, and the tally was once 224 to 1. (The professional-Ecu opposition boycotted the vote.) Now the police had been tasked with clearing the road for the mayor of Tbilisi to preside over the illumination of the capital’s Christmas tree, intended to turn that the federal government had the placement below keep watch over.
