Georgia’s ruling party is trying to make “illegitimacy” itself a prosecutable idea, turning a political dispute over the 2024 election into a criminal code problem, and daring critics to keep saying what they’ve been saying out loud. On paper, the new draft provision, a proposed Article 316¹, branded as “Extremism against the Constitutional Order of Georgia” reads like a public-order measure. In practice, it is a legitimacy trap. It would punish “systematic and public” calls for mass lawbreaking or disobedience, and it would also criminalize repeated public attempts to “present oneself or another person as a Georgian authority,” or other systematic actions aimed at establishing the perception that constitutional bodies are illegitimate. The bill’s genius, from the state’s perspective, is that it doesn’t have to define “illegitimacy” in any precise way. It only needs prosecutors and judges willing to treat sustained political messaging as a public threat. Individuals could face fines, 400–600 hours of community service, or up to three years in prison. Legal entities could face fines and even liquidation. And the ruling party is trying to add a second mechanism on top: a new aggravating “motive of non-recognition,” which would tack an extra year onto sentences when prosecutors argue that a crime was committed out of refusal to recognize the constitutional order. That is how speech becomes infrastructure: once “motive” is criminalized, the state can punish not only what you did, but the story it claims you were trying to tell. This is not emerging in a vacuum. Georgian Dream is legislating in the shadow of a legitimacy crisis it insists does not exist. After the disputed 2024 parliamentary elections, many opponents and critics have refused to treat the current government as a lawful authority. In Georgian political language, that refusal shows up everywhere, from calling the cabinet “illegitimate” to describing it as “Ivanishvili’s government,” to the former president Salome Zourabichvili’s refusal to recognize the new president chosen by a parliament born of contested elections. Georgian Dream’s answer is not to win the argument; it is to narrow the space in which the argument can be made. Supporters of the bill insist they will draw a “clear line” between free expression and criminal conduct: one person saying something once, they claim, won’t qualify. But the bill is written to make that line discretionary, not clear. “Systematic,” “public,” “establishing a perception,” “harm Georgia’s interests,” and “real threat of such harm” are all phrases that can be stretched until they fit the target. If you are a journalist who repeatedly describes institutions as captured, is that “systematic action”? If you’re a civil society group publishing regular statements that the government lacks legitimacy, is that “establishing a perception”? If you’re an opposition figure urging people to treat parliament as unlawful and boycott its processes, is that “mass disobedience”? The draft is built so that the state can answer yes when it wants to. The ruling party is also trying to give this maneuver international cover. Its representatives have pointed to Germany’s crackdown on a fringe movement that created parallel governing structures, implying this is standard democratic self-defense. Critics note the mismatch: the German case involved a cult-like rejection of the state itself; Georgia is criminalizing a political judgment about whether a specific government derived from contested elections can be trusted or recognized. That comparison isn’t an argument. It’s a costume. What this law would do, even if it’s rarely used at full force, is produce a climate. The threat is the point. Once the criminal code is available, editors self-censor. NGOs rephrase. activists second-guess. The government doesn’t need to imprison thousands; it only needs a few high-profile cases, and a vague statute that makes everyone else do the math in advance. Georgia’s leadership has described its post-2024 restrictions as necessary to fight “external influence.” But this provision isn’t about foreign powers; it’s about domestic consent. It is an attempt to legislate recognition, to make the state’s version of legitimacy the only safe language in public life. A government confident in its mandate does not criminalize disbelief. It governs. A government that fears the word “illegitimate” doesn’t just fear speech; it fears the possibility that citizens might stop acting as if the ruling party’s authority is natural, inevitable, or deserved.