Tens of thousands of Georgians have taken part in rival rallies in advance of a high-stakes parliamentary election on Saturday, which ruling and opposition parties alike expect to be followed by claims of foul play and calls for street protests.
Two decades after the United National Movement (UNM) won elections following the peaceful Rose Revolution, it is the biggest of a host of opposition parties that hope to form a coalition government to end the 12-year rule of the Georgian Dream party, which they and the West accuse of moving towards autocracy and Moscow’s orbit.
The European Union halted Georgia’s accession process this summer after its government pushed through laws to limit LGBT+ rights and tighten control over civil society groups, which to critics closely resemble measures imposed in Russia.
Although two waves of mass protests in the capital, Tbilisi, ultimately failed to block the legislation, opposition groups say they mobilised many thousands of young Georgians who are now engaged in politics, eager to vote on Saturday and ready to defend that vote in demonstrations if they suspect the election has been rigged.
“We don’t want to go back into a Soviet Union or into Russia again. Russia occupied our country in the 20th century and this government says it is our friend – but that’s not true,” Mariami Cholokhadze (21) said at an opposition rally on Tbilisi’s Freedom Square this week.
“I think the opposition will win the election. And if Georgian Dream loses it has to go. There is no other way.”
Anna Giorgadze (34), a Tbilisi doctor, said she attended the rally “to show Europe that we will come out, show ourselves and raise our voices in support of the European path”.
“Of course they will try to hold on to power,” she said of Georgian Dream. “Nothing they do is peaceful, and the laws they have implemented recently are taking us towards dictatorship. Let’s hope they will leave. But our country has fought many times and I think we’ll be ready to fight again.”
Georgian Dream insists that its policy of not antagonising Russia actually safeguards peace for the country of 3.7 million people, and claims its opponents could provoke a repeat of the 2008 war that Georgia lost to its northern neighbour.
The party’s main campaign pledges have been to maintain peace and economic growth – which is forecast to be 7.6 per cent this year – and supporters at a rally on Freedom Square on Wednesday backed those priorities.
[ Daniel McLaughlin in Tbilisi: Georgian rivals present stark choice to votersOpens in new window ]
The gathering was at least as big as Sunday’s opposition march but the crowd seemed older, poorer and more male. Thousands had been bussed in from around the country for the event and many people refused to talk about politics and the election. Government critics said they were largely state workers who would have been ordered to attend and will be pressured to show loyalty by voting en masse for the ruling party.
“Georgian Dream must win, because we need peace – look how Ukraine is suffering now from war – and we have to defend our traditions. We want to be in the European Union but we don’t need that LGBT stuff,” said Nino, a Tbilisi resident.
“We’re a Christian Orthodox nation and that should be respected,” added her friend Marina.
Most surveys suggest Georgian Dream will take the most seats of any single party on Saturday, but fewer than a loose alliance of four opposition blocs if all of them gain the 5 per cent of votes needed to enter parliament, as polls predict they will.
“The least likely scenario is Georgian Dream accepting defeat and leaving quietly,” says Nino Dolidze, head of the public policy centre for the opposition Droa (It’s Time) party that is a member of the centre-right Coalition for Change.
She says Georgian Dream might mimic Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko who, despite apparently losing 2020 presidential elections, simply declared himself the winner and brutally crushed subsequent protests.
“Then we would have to resist and fight for our votes, and in this case we are hoping for support from the people and from the West,” Dolidze says.
“I think a third scenario is most likely – that Georgian Dream tries to mess [with the election] in every possible way, to interfere at every polling station, to steal and buy votes everywhere, and to cause problems between the opposition parties,” she adds.
Marika Mikiashvili, Droa’s head of foreign affairs, says Georgian Dream loyalists now run key institutions, including the central election commission, making the role of opposition and foreign observers at polling stations vital; the government denies exerting unfair control over the election process.
“There will definitely be manipulation of the election,” Mikiashvili says. “But if turnout is big enough, then we can overwhelm any manipulation. I do not exclude a Lukashenko scenario but they [Georgian Dream] do not have the army’s support and the police is not unconditionally loyal to them. They’re not all one ‘tribe’.”
Senior UNM member Petre Tsiskarishvili says the government has severely limited the number of polling stations abroad to restrict the influence of the pro-opposition diaspora, and could fraudulently boost its own numbers with the unused votes of Georgians overseas.
“We can expect anything from these guys. They’ve undermined all democratic reforms and institutions despite recommendations from the European Union,” he says.
“This regime thinks that only holding on to power is in its interests. They look at Belarus and Russia and some central Asian countries and think, why shouldn’t we rule like [Vladimir] Putin or Lukashenko, who’ve been in power for more than 20 years?”
Brussels and Washington have warned Georgia of severe consequences if the elections are rigged or marred by state violence, and visa-free travel to the EU for Georgians could be at risk and the billionaire Ivanishvili may face financial sanctions.
Yet Georgian Dream’s rhetoric has not softened as voting day nears, with Ivanishvili and allies threatening again to ban and prosecute political foes and warning darkly about a “party of war” in the West that supposedly aims to destabilise Georgia, force it into conflict with Russia and help the opposition violently oust the government.
Nikoloz Samkharadze, a senior Georgian Dream member and chairman of the foreign relations committee in the country’s parliament, says he expects his party to take more than 50 per cent of votes – but “of course” it would accept defeat.
“I don’t see that any irregularities will happen. We are a democratic party and we trust our people. So any result that comes from the central election commission will be accepted by us,” he adds.
Samkharadze believes it is the opposition – and particularly UNM – that will cry foul if it loses in what he insists will be a fair fight.
“At least some part of the opposition will not accept the results. The UNM have never accepted such a result straight away,” he says.
“Maybe [they will accept it] months later, but they have always tried to stir up the situation in the country and call for street protests. And then, when they saw that the population was not in the mood for going along with these lies, they entered parliament. I think the same scenario awaits us again.”
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