The Week in Brief

Authorities outmaneuvered the opposition by convening the new parliament days earlier than expected. The feint successfully threw off a planned protest, and parliament is now getting on with business—albeit without its boycotting opposition MPs.

The United Opposition bloc is coming apart at the seams as at least two more leading members said they would leave the group. There are mutual recriminations and talk of infighting, but the biggest divide looks to be over its parliamentary boycott. Some of its leaders would prefer to take their seats, rather than go along in renouncing their MP status.

The increasingly influential Christian Democrats, along with a handful of standalone opposition politicians, are in talks with the government on taking their seats in parliament, likely sparing the authorities an embarrassing one-party legislature.

Moscow’s mayor enraged Georgians by saying the country should recognize the independence of its two breakaway regions. Tbilisi officials say they’ll seek to make him persona non grata in Georgia.

Scores of female inmates at a Tbilisi prison are on hunger strike, demanding their cases be reviewed and their conditions improved. The prison department says there is ‘no sense’ to their complaints.

After meeting with Russia’s president, President Mikheil Saakashvili said Georgia’s freedom—and Europe’s principles—are at stake as tensions remain high over the breakaway region of Abkhazia.

Masked men kidnapped and beat the uncle of former defense minister and would-be opposition leader Irakli Okruashvili, who recently won political asylum in France. There have been a string of attacks on opposition activists since the May elections, none of which have been solved.