Georgia’s Post-Election Perils
Protests continue against validity of electoral win that risks diverting country’s pro-European path.
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The Georgian Dream (GD) party, which has ruled Georgia since 2012, claimed victory in the October 26 parliamentary elections with 54 per cent of the vote. As opposition parties – backed by the EU and US – dispute the fairness and transparency of the vote, IWPR Caucasus regional director Beka Bajelidze explores the impact on this small but strategically significant country.
What are the wider regional implications of the election results?
The international response has been highly divided. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran extended congratulations to GD even before the official announcement of results; Russia and China also commended the Georgian government and people.
Hungary showed exceptional support, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán personally visiting Georgia just two days after the election to endorse the GD leadership.
In contrast, the US and EU have called for an investigation into the election's integrity based on reports from local and international elections observing missions.
Despite its small size, Georgia is more strategically significant than ever before.
It sits on a key carbon trade route connecting the Caspian basin resources to Europe and is a vital partner in the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline project that supplies Azerbaijani gas to European markets through a hub in Turkey.
Additionally, Georgia now serves as a reliable component for China’s Silk Road Economic Belt, a key part of the Belt and Road Initiative, connecting China with Turkey, Russia and Europe across the Black Sea.
Among all these stakeholders, Russia has the greatest interest in Georgia as it struggles under sanctions. It increasingly relies on Georgia as the only air- and land-based access for Russia to reach developed financial and commodity markets like Turkey and, through it, the rest of the world.
What impact do you think disinformation operations had ahead of the vote?
“We were not just witnesses but also victims of what can only be described as a Russian special operation - a new form of hybrid warfare waged against our people and our country,” said Salome Zurabishvili, the president of Georgia, on the day following the election in an address calling for the results not to be recognised.
“It was a complete falsification and theft of your votes… Additionally, modern technologies were employed to cover up these manipulations - a level of deception we had not encountered before,” she continued.
Indeed, the issue goes beyond mere disinformation and propaganda campaigns. It appears that a sophisticated psychological operations campaign, spanning multiple domains - physical, financial, cultural, legislative, cyber, and information – was deployed.
Such operations heavily capitalise on polarisation, a phenomenon that Georgia’s EU partners have urged the government to address since the 2020 parliamentary elections.
Since the start of the pre-election period - which actually began with the reintroduction of the Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence in March this year - GD has focused on the amplification of extremes on topics such as LGBTI issues and an apparently binary choice between war like in Ukraine and peace. Most recently, they made a gesture to separatist Ossetia offering an apology for the crimes committed by the previous ruling party.
All these follow the psyops playbook; to influence beliefs, emotions and attitudes so as to shape the behaviour of governing and business elites as well as leading public figures through narratives that encourage popular discontent and degrade unity at both domestic and foreign policy levels.
This divisive political discourse pushed individuals toward radicalisation, creating a sense of crisis and urgency.
This was perfectly illustrated by their No War, Elect Peace election campaign, which followed signature Russian marketing by appealing to fear in a binary framework that capitalised on human tragedy and suffering.
Huge banners adorned the centre of Tbilisi depicting the juxtaposition of black-and-white images of war-destroyed Ukraine with colourful photos of prosperous, peaceful Georgia. The message was clear, as was the implication that the blame for the invasion lay with Ukraine rather than Russia.
What has been the reaction from civil society, and what plans for a “fightback”?
Georgian civil society has long worked hard to expose and oppose worrying anti-democratic trends of recent years. Organisations have appealed to the courts on multiple occasions, organised mass protests and actively raised public awareness.
These same groups have continued to raise the alarm following the election, appealing for greater guidance and support from allies. Protests are held daily and have grown steadily, and the opposition shows no willingness to accept the official results.
The four opposition parties made to the parliament by crossing the five per cent threshold, and all allege election rigging and breaches of the constitutional right to a secret vote, demanding a repeat election.
What are the implications for Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
The issues of the territorial integrity of Georgia did not stand out in the election campaigns of any political party, probably because every reputable poll indicated that Georgians’ primary concerns for were poverty, unemployment and rising prices. Territorial integrity ranked fourth.
Another reason may have been that neither the ruling nor opposition parties had anything substantial to offer given the highly complex nature of the issue in the current geopolitical context and the war in Ukraine.
In the absence of any publicly known strategy or vision on how to resolve Georgia’s issues of territorial integrity, it is unlikely that we will see any tangible progress in this regard. But as Georgia gains more strategic importance for Russia, we can expect that this issue will periodically surface in the media agenda and societal discourse. It presents a useful testing tool to check Georgian public attitudes towards more pragmatic issues like the opening of the railroad that connects with Russia through Abkhazia and the overland access through Roki tunnel in South Ossetia.
Russia currently holds strong leverage over Georgia through its large military presence in its two occupied regions in the west on the Black Sea and in the East close to vital north-south routes through the Caucasus Mountain chain.
Russia now has a friendly government in Georgia. How long this friendship will last depends on combination of domestic resilience and geopolitical factors, especially on the new US administration and its policy towards the eastern neighbourhood and the war in Ukraine.
While Georgia theoretically aspires to join the EU, 12 years of GD rule have instead seen wealth and power concentrate in the hands of handful of officials closely siding with the party’s billionaire chairman of Bidzina Ivanishvili.
This shift has fuelled protests and discontent domestically and raised concerns among international partners, with some labelling this trend as kleptocratic and suggesting worrying signs of emerging autocracy.
