Georgia’s Fateful Election
Government and opposition alike know these polls will have a huge influence on the country's future.
Georgians are holding their breath in anticipation of the October 26 parliamentary elections.
The incumbent Georgian Dream (GD) party, created and led by Bidzina Ivanishvili - a billionaire who made his money in Russia - is challenged by four opposition blocs.
While we all know these polls will have a huge influence on the country's future, predicting the outcome is still extremely difficult.
A GD victory will indefinitely suspend the country's traditional policy of European integration. Paradoxically, this happens when Georgia finally has a realistic chance of joining the EU, having received membership candidate status last year.
Now, EU representatives have all made clear that with the GD at the helm, the process of integration will be stopped. Georgia may lose some of the privileges it had gained so far, including the visa-free regime for traveling to Schengen-zone countries, notwithstanding that this isolation from the West will make the country much more dependent on Russia, if not its outright satellite.
A GD victory will also signal important changes in the domestic political system. Georgia has never been a full democracy, having been dominated by political parties unified around single leaders. But it was a mostly free society with dynamic opposition that could at times change government, a vibrant civil society and uninhibited and influential independent media.
GD promises to end that. In the spring, despite huge protests, the GD-led parliament adopted a law modeled on similar Russian legislation that declared any organisation receiving Western funding to be a “foreign agent” which would include almost all NGOs and an important part of independent media. GD has also promised to ban all Europe-oriented opposition parties.
Hence, from the opposition perspective at least, the elections are primarily about the choice between Europe and Russia, which also implies a choice between democracy and autocracy. While the opposition factions have numerous differences, they are united in their commitment to reviving the European integration agenda.
Many foreign observers ask a natural question: Why would an openly anti-western and at least tacitly pro-Russian party stand any chance in elections? For more than 20 years, all opinion polls in Georgia steadily showed overwhelming support of around 70-80 per cent for European integration; support for joining NATO is only marginally lower.
The same polls have also shown a reasonably strong commitment to democratic norms. Despite an extremely confrontational political culture, the policy of Western integration had always been a point of consensus amongst the political elite; there had never been an openly anti-Western party of any consequence. So what happened?
There are several reasons why GD still has sizeable support. First, it never admits to being anti-western: however improbably, it still promises to gain EU membership by 2030. For anybody with some understanding of politics, the absurdity of such a claim is obvious. But some may still be fooled, or prefer to be fooled.
Most importantly, GD has been at least partly successful in pushing for a narrative of peace versus war. It is based on a ludicrous conspiracy theory about a mysterious Global War Party running the West and hatching a plan to drag Georgia into the war with Russia. According to this narrative, Ivanishvili is the main obstacle to this plan and so the West is keen to destroy him. This makes all his domestic critics a local chapter of said Global War Party, with the pro-western opposition and civil society particular enemies of Georgia.
Given Ivanishvili’s paranoid and conspiratorial mindset, he may actually believe this gibberish. Most importantly, however absurd this story is, it may nonetheless have hit a nerve for some people.
In Georgia, Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine caused not only outrage but also fear. Russia attacked Georgia in 2008 and may do it again. The message GD is hammering into Georgians’ minds is that the West failed to protect Ukraine and will be even less able to protect Georgia. This narrative has found a receptive audience.
Hard To Predict
There are at least two reasons why it has been so difficult to predict the outcome of these elections. The first is the dearth of reliable opinion polls. One commissioned by a government propaganda channel gave 60 percent to GD, but this source has been proven false before. Other recent polls from the opposition-leaning media - some of which have slightly better records - gave 30-35 percent to GD, with the four opposition blocs easily passing the five per cent threshold to enter parliament.
As the electoral system is fully proportional, this would mean a clear-cut victory for the opposition.
Although not everybody trusts these polls either, there are some reasons to believe that such an outcome may be realistic.
Since 2012, the GD has never got over 50 per cent of the vote in elections. In the last two years, its support has visibly declined, while - following GD change of course - the opposition electorate has become more mobilised. This is especially true of young people who had never cared for party politics, but this time are motivated to vote as they see the GD trajectory as a threat to their future.
Many are sceptical of the opposition’s prospects for another reason. Even if GD loses, will it accept defeat? In previous elections, GD used intimidation and vote-buying as well as outright fraud, which supposedly helped it outperform the polls. The same will be true now too, but the question remains to what extent. There is always a handicap in favour of the incumbent, but how big it will be this time?
Other doubts relate to the opposition's capacity to come together if GD is defeated. President Salome Zurabishvili has been trying to play a mediator’s role and has proposed the idea of a temporary technical government, which may make agreement easier. On the other hand, Ivanishvili might use his enormous financial resources to win over some opposition lawmakers after the elections. Georgia has never had a true opposition government, so scepticism on this account is explicable.
This leaves both government and opposition supporters anticipating the elections with a mixture of hope and fear. Whatever the result, this may be a turning point for Georgia.
