Georgia votes this Saturday in a crucial election. After 12 years of government by the populist Georgian Dream party (SG), the pro-Western opposition believes it is in a position to seize power from an increasingly authoritarian Executive, which, in addition to approving laws that endanger the survival of civil society, It has strayed from the path to European accession and has turned towards Russia and China. Not only may it be the opposition’s best chance to wrest power from SG; It may also be the last.
The leaders of SG and its leader, the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, have threatened that, if they obtain a sufficient majority, they will begin an illegalization process against the main opposition parties through the Prosecutor’s Office and the Constitutional Court, and have even assured that They will cancel the minutes of the elected deputies of these formations. “It is unacceptable that [en caso de ilegalización] criminal representatives of criminal political forces retain their positions as members of Parliament,” Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze warned.
“This is the most important moment in Georgia’s history,” says Nino Dolidze, of the opposition Coalition for Change. “A battle similar to that of April 9, 1989,” when the protests began that would lead to the country’s secession from the USSR two years later. “If the Government wins, it will be disastrous. Many people will have to flee the country. But I don’t want to put myself in that place, we are going to fight for every vote and be focused from the morning until the counting is over,” continues Dolidze.
The current Government of Georgia signed an association agreement with the European Union in 2014 and last December received the status of a candidate country for accession, but the process has been frozen by the harsh laws adopted by the Executive during the last year. For Ana Tavadze, from the Shame movement, the authoritarian drift has been intensifying since 2018, with “increasingly brutal” repression. Likewise, it denounces the Government’s attempts to silence the opposition media, imprisoning and investigating its directors; of co-opting the judicial system – the US has sanctioned the former chief prosecutor for working alongside the Russian secret services and four members of the Supreme Court for corruption -; and “disseminating Russian propaganda.”
One of the latest initiatives, approved this spring despite opposition in the streets, has been the Foreign Influence Transparency Law, inspired by Russian regulations and which, if implemented, will be a nail in the coffin of the vibrant Georgian civil society. “Non-governmental organizations have monitored the activity of institutions and many even provide services where the State does not fulfill its function,” explains Tavadze. From the ruling party they assure that the only thing they want is more transparency in the financing of NGOs, media and individuals who receive subsidies and donations from abroad; which in a small and rather poor country like Georgia involves almost the entire civil society, not only those more political associations, but also initiatives to support the incorporation of women into the world of work, or associations to help women. people with Down syndrome.
“The law allows the Government to access all the data that organizations have on their staff and the beneficiaries of their projects, in addition to imposing very high fines if strict accounting rules are breached, which in practice will mean that many will have to close. “, criticizes the activist. “The proof that it is a Russian-inspired law is that only Moscow and ideologues like Alexander Dugin [filósofo ruso, nacionalista y de extrema derecha] “They have supported it, while all our Western partners criticize it,” he adds.
Polarization and social inequality
Georgians go to the polls after a highly polarized campaign in which the Government has accused the West and NGOs of plotting a “revolution” in case they do not win the elections. The country introduces a new law for the distribution of highly proportional seats, which implies that, if SG does not obtain at least 45% of the votes, it will be very difficult to revalidate its mandate; The surveys give it between 32% and 60%, depending on whether they are commissioned by pro-government or opposition media.
Furthermore, on this occasion the opposition parties, usually fighting, have agreed on a series of measures proposed by the president, Salome Zurabishvili, which provide for the formation of a coalition Executive, whose reforms would be aimed at undoing the undemocratic legislation approved in recent years, reform the Justice system and recover the EU accession process. Although they have not been able to agree on a single list, the different parties have united around four coalitions that range from the right to the center-left, which can actually guarantee them more votes, since many Georgians flatly reject the main opposition party. , the right-wing United National Movement (MNU), which governed between 2003 and 2012 and, in its final years, violently repressed its critics. “Until now, SG had never faced a strong opposition alternative and had capitalized on the fear of a return of the MNU,” says Tavadze.
Georgia’s history since independence has followed a similar pattern: parties or leaders coming to power with strong support and a program of democratic reforms, but over time concentrating power and giving in to authoritarian tendencies. The best vaccine against this, says Dolidze, is that “the next Government is a coalition between several parties, so that no one concentrates power.”
In addition to the authoritarian turn, Georgian Dream, which began as a center-left party (it had observer status in the European Socialists and Democrats until it was expelled last year), has in recent years adopted ultra-conservative rhetoric similar to that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Vladimir Putin in Russia, with speeches and legislation against the LGTBI+ community very similar to those of the Kremlin. This has created a climate of hostility that has led to attacks, the murder of a trans model and the exile of members of the LGTBI+ community. In an interview broadcast this week, Ivanishvili stood as a defender of “traditional values” in the face of a Europe that, he said, distributes “pads in men’s bathrooms” and equates “men’s and women’s milk.”
This fact, and the fact that in recent weeks the Government has donated land in several locations to the Orthodox Patriarchate, has caused the influential Georgian church to publish messages of tacit support for the party. Ivanishvili’s formation has also relied on the thugs of Alt-Info – and on the channel attached to this far-right formation that many consider financed by Russia – who have attacked dozens of activists and journalists critical of the Government. One of them died in 2021 after a beating by far-right militants, although the Government attributes his death to an overdose.
Also in the final stretch of the elections, independent observers and opposition parties have denounced the ruling party’s attempts to intimidate voters, especially in locations outside the capital, where employment depends heavily on the clientelistic relationships established by Georgian Dream.
“No party cares about workers or their economic problems. It has been a campaign driven by the fear of Georgian Dream followers that the opposition will rule, and of opposition followers that SG will lead us to authoritarianism and Russia,” unionist Sopo Japaridze complains. And the lack of an attractive discourse in this area may be one of the opposition’s weak points.
Although salaries have risen in Georgia in recent years, the average salary barely reaches 350 euros, while the Platform for Fair Work considers that almost twice as much money is needed to cover all vital needs. And prices have skyrocketed not only due to the global inflationary crisis, but also due to the arrival of more than 100,000 Russians – many of them from the middle or upper class – who were escaping military mobilization in their country, which has tripled rents in major Georgian cities.
Since the implosion of the Soviet Union, Georgia has been immersed in a process of progressive population loss. Not only because there are more deaths than births, but because many Georgians have emigrated abroad in search of opportunities. And this emigration has skyrocketed in the last two years, in which more than 370,000 Georgians, that is, 10% of the population, have left the country: some of them highly qualified young people, dissatisfied with the political situation. This is the case of Shota, who worked for the State and whose name is published modified to protect his identity. He left because he couldn’t stand the political pressures and now survives with a precarious job abroad. He wants to return to his country, but not at any price: “I want to return to a European Georgia, not a Russian Georgia. “These elections are our last chance.”
