In few cities, perhaps with the exception of Brussels, do you see as many flags of the European Union as in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. The navy blue flag with its stars appears painted on the walls of the city, hanging from commercial establishments, flying in official buildings. It is in the electoral propaganda and in the rallies of the opposition parties and the government formation. The European dream is even engraved in the country’s own Constitution: “Constitutional bodies shall take all measures within their powers to ensure the full integration of Georgia into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” But this aspiration, which according to surveys is shared by more than 80% of Georgians, is in danger. And this Saturday it is put to the test at the polls.
Last December, Georgia received the status of a candidate country for accession. However, this summer, Brussels decided to freeze the process in the face of the successive laws of the Government of the Georgian Dream party (SG) that go in the opposite direction to the community spirit – such as the law on foreign agents similar to the one in force in Russia, the elimination of quotas for women in politics and the Administration, and the law against “LGBT propaganda”—and in the face of the perception of a progressive alignment of the country with Russia and China. At the same time, the United States has declared sanctions against two senior Georgian government officials – for their role in the repression of pro-European protests this spring – and is preparing a new package for after the elections.
For this reason, the country’s president, Salomé Zurabishvili, who was elected in 2018 with the support of SG, but who is now facing the Executive for this anti-Western drift, has defined next Saturday’s parliamentary elections as a “referendum” between Russia and West.
“The reason Georgia received its candidate status, as European authorities have made clear in their public statements, was not because of the Government and its reforms, but because of the pro-European attitude and identity of its population. And the EU has clearly said that it is the actions of the current Government that are undermining this process,” says academic and retired politician Sergi Kapanadze, of the think tank Grass.
On Saturday, 3.5 million Georgians are called to the polls in parliamentary elections in which Georgian Dream once again starts as a favorite after 12 years in power, but in which the main enigma is whether it will be able to revalidate its majority absolute or, if not, whether the opposition will obtain enough seats to take power from it.
With everything at stake, SG has placed number one on its lists its founder and honorary president, the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who, after holding the prime minister’s portfolio for a year between 2012 and 2013, had retired to manage power from the shadows. According to Transparency International, Ivanishvili is by far the richest man in Georgia: he owns more than 4.5 billion euros (equivalent to a sixth of the country’s GDP), most of it amassed in Russia — where he still maintains properties — in the chaotic period that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to various testimonies of the time, he supported and financed the pro-Western government that emerged from the Rose Revolution (2003), although he finally used his wealth to unite the opposition and unseat President Mikhail Saakashvili, whose neoliberal reforms, growing authoritarianism and confrontation with Russia had made him increasingly unpopular (and he was imprisoned after returning to Georgia in 2021).
Since it began its first term in 2012, Georgian Dream has been getting rid of its former allies and co-opting the institutions of the country, which after its independence from the USSR had prided itself on being the most democratic among its neighbors. And the country has begun to flirt with Russia—which maintains a military presence in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, officially Georgian territory—and to sign cooperation agreements with China, which is viewed with concern from Brussels and Washington, since In the last 20 years, Georgia had become a bastion of Western influence in the Caucasus and pipelines such as the BTC oil pipeline and the South Caucasus gas pipeline pass through its territory, key for Europe to reduce its energy dependence on Moscow.
“We are a small country, with an open economy, so we seek to sign free trade agreements with all the countries we can, we also have with the EU, India, the United Arab Emirates. We want to diversify trade,” justifies Nikoloz Samkharazde, chairman of the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee and SG deputy. “But that does not mean that we abandon our European path,” he adds, giving as an example that it was his government that included in the Constitution the transitional provision on accession to the EU and NATO.
In this regard, the Georgian Dream Government seems to want to apply a policy similar to the strategic ambiguity of its neighbor Turkey, a NATO member, EU candidate, but which maintains good relations with Putin’s Russia. “For us it doesn’t work like that. Türkiye is a very influential country in its own right. We are a small country and if we have chosen to ally with the EU and NATO it is because it is necessary for our own national security,” criticizes Alexandre Crevaux, Foreign Affairs spokesman for the main opposition party, the United National Movement (MNU), for who the agreements with China have only meant “debts” for Georgia and the arrival of Chinese and Russian money to “finance disinformation media.”
Conspiracy theories
Many of the bus stop shelters in Tbilisi are covered with propaganda posters featuring a black and white photo of a dilapidated building (until a few weeks ago they were Ukrainian buildings destroyed by the Russian invasion, but complaints from kyiv they made them change). Next to it, a similar color photograph shows the progress of the last 12 years. Under the black and white photograph, accompanied by the opposition logos, a message says “No to war.” Under the color photograph and Georgian Dream logo, “Choose Peace.”
If the ruling party finds it bad that the elections are presented as a plebiscite between the West and Russia, on the other hand it has had no qualms about presenting them as a referendum in which voters will choose between war and peace. On Wednesday, at his last campaign rally in Tbilisi – for which the entire center of the capital was blocked and hundreds of people were brought in on buses from all over the country – Ivanishvili appeared on a separate platform from the rest of the the SG leaders, protected by a bulletproof screen, and insisted on the same message that his Government has been repeating in recent months: if the opposition wins, Georgia will be dragged into the war. “Peace must be protected, especially now, when external and internal enemies try to open a second front [en la guerra de Ucrania]”, he stated.
This is what various Georgian Dream leaders call “the Global War Party,” a theory according to which Western-funded think tanks, EU diplomats and opposition parties conspire to have Georgia declare war on Russia, take by force the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and thus open a second front that diverts Moscow’s attention to Ukraine. Another theory that he has continually repeated is that the West is preparing a coup d’état or a revolution against SG in case the opposition loses the elections.
It is not something trivial. In its short history as an independent State, Georgia has suffered three wars: a civil war (1991-1992); that of Abkhazia (1992-1993), in which it lost control of this region; and that of 2008, in which it lost control of South Ossetia and Russian forces occupied its territory. So these threats awaken fear in the population. “We want Europe, of course, but we also want to live in peace, that’s why I support this Government,” explains David, a project manager attending Wednesday’s rally who refuses to give his last name.
“We want Europe, we want a European future, but not in the way that is dictated to us from outside. We will not be vassals of anyone, we will not obey orders from outside, we will not renounce our interests or our sovereignty or our independence and freedom, which we have won with blood,” said the mayor of Tbilisi, Kakha Kaladze, defiantly, at the SG rally. These statements are honey on flakes for the Kremlin, which sees in the Georgian authorities leaders receptive to its positions such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Robert Fico in Slovakia. As a reward, Russia has offered to mediate between Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia to normalize their relations (something that the separatist authorities have always opposed).
Last Monday, the foreign ministers of 13 EU countries, including France and Germany, published an open letter in which they denounced that the Union and its members are being “insulted and accused without any evidence of coup plots and murders” by part of members of the Georgian Government. “The door [a la adhesión de la UE] is open and will continue to be,” the letter emphasizes, but warns: “Georgia will not become a member of the EU if its authorities do not change path.” The German ambassador in Tbilisi summed it up succinctly: “Georgia can do whatever it wants. What you cannot do is do whatever you want and join the EU. You decide.”