Georgia’s election sees voters choose between Russia or Europe

Parliamentary elections in Georgia this weekend have been described as the vote “of a lifetime” that will determine whether the country moves toward Russia or the West.

The vote on Saturday is being closely watched for whether the ruling “Georgian Dream” party — which has morphed from an expressly pro-Western grouping over its 12 years in power to a decidedly pro-Russia one in recent years — can hold on to office, or whether it will unseated by pro-Western opposition parties.

Voter polls in the run-up to the vote are considered unreliable as they have generally been commissioned or conducted by pro-opposition or pro-government groups. There’s also the possibility that none of the parties on the ballot paper will be able to form a government on its own and a coalition will be necessary. 

Close watchers of Georgian politics say Saturday’s election is a pivotal moment for a country that, like other former Soviet republics, has found itself pulled between a future aligned with Russia or the West, and where political polarization has become pronounced.

“All sides agree the upcoming elections are a critical moment for Georgia’s future,” Ketevan Chachava, non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said in commentary earlier this month.

“The governing Georgian Dream Party’s rhetoric toward the West — its founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, calls the West the “party of war” and says it forced Georgia and Russia into confrontation — has alarmed pro-European groups, international partners and observers, highlighting a broader struggle between pro-European and pro-Russian forces,” she noted.

The Georgian Dream-led government has enacted various policies of late that have gone against the grain of its previous ambitions to join NATO and the European Union and have instead aligned it with Moscow, with the introduction of what critics and opposition parties decry as repressive laws stifling media freedoms, civil society and the rights of sexual minorities.

The introduction of a Russia-style law on foreign influence in May — and a brutal police crackdown on subsequent protests at the bill — was particularly contentious, and seen as the most obvious example of Georgian Dream’s slide toward a Kremlin-like style of governance.

The government has since doubled down on perceived Western influences in domestic politics, saying it would seek to ban all pro-Western opposition groups if it secures a constitutional majority in this weekend’s election.

Despite its increasingly anti-Western rhetoric, Georgian Dream insists it still wants Georgia to join the EU and its election posters feature the party’s logo along with the symbol of the EU.

The Georgian government’s perceived backtracking on human rights and democratic principles have put it in direct conflict with Washington and the EU, which have imposed sanctions on Georgian officials, and put Tbilisi’s EU accession talks and funding on ice as a result. It’s a rapid fall from grace as Georgia only obtained EU candidate status in December 2023.

European lawmakers warned this month that “democracy is at risk” in Georgia, and have told Georgian Dream it must “roll back undemocratic legislation in order to make progress in its relations with the EU,” a statement from the European Parliament earlier in October noted.

European lawmakers see the upcoming parliamentary elections as “decisive in determining Georgia’s future democratic development and geopolitical choice” and its ability to make progress on its EU member state candidacy, the European Parliament noted.

Analysts have widely described Georgia’s election as a referendum “for or against Europe,” but it could also be viewed as a vote for or against remaining within Russia’s sphere of influence and closer geopolitical and economic relations with Moscow.

The specter of Georgia’s former Soviet overlord certainly looms large over the vote, with Moscow seen to have exerted a stronger influence over the ruling Georgian Dream party in recent years, and particularly since it launched its invasion of fellow former Soviet republic and pro-Western Ukraine in February 2022.

Georgian Dream refrained from joining Western and international sanctions against Russia after the war began and founder Ivanishvili has pitched the election as a choice between peace and war, casting the West as a “Global War Party” that would suck Georgia into a conflict with Russia, as he said it had done with Ukraine.

Moscow will be watching the outcome closely, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War noted Monday, noting that the Kremlin intends to leverage any Russia-friendly Georgian government “to enhance strategic Russian interests and Moscow’s geopolitical objectives of asserting control over Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia.”

“The election outcome will likely determine whether Georgia abandons its longstanding policy of aligning with the West and instead deepens economic and political ties with the Kremlin in line with the pro-Kremlin positions the ruling Georgian Dream party has increasingly taken,” the ISW noted.

Meanwhile, Georgian Dream founder Ivanishvili sought to demonize the pro-Western opposition at a rally Wednesday, telling crowds of pro-government supporters that if Georgian Dream won the election it would make opposition parties “answer with the full rigor of the law for the war crimes committed against the population of Georgia,” Reuters reported, without specifying what crimes they had committed.

Tbilisi’s pre-election environment has been increasingly polarized, analysts say, setting the stage for heightened tensions around the election result, whatever the outcome.

An additional complicating factor is recent electoral reform, which means the 150 seats in Georgia’s parliament will be awarded under a fully proportional system, with parties needing to surpass a 5% threshold to win seats.

“In addition to recent poll results, the switch to a fully proportional electoral system makes it difficult to imagine GD’s [Golden Dream’s] outright victory or the opposition’s complete defeat,” Tina Dolbaia, Benjamin Shefner, and Maria Snegovaya of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in analysis last week.

“The most likely scenario, according to this logic, would be a coalition government in Tbilisi, curbing GD’s power. However, there are significant concerns over electoral malfeasance, including vote buying, ballot stuffing, carousel voting, misusing the state and administrative resources, and depriving citizens living outside of Georgia of the right to vote,” the analysts noted.

“Additionally, even if the civil society manages to overcome these obstacles on election day and GD fails to secure a majority of seats, the political environment in Georgia is still deeply polarized. If the opposition refuses to form a single bloc after the elections, GD may remain the most powerful party in the parliament.”