Georgia is at a crossroads. The contested result of its recent parliamentary elections risks further dashing the country’s European hopes. A Russian-inspired authoritarianism could take its place.
The election, which the increasingly Kremlin-friendly party, Georgian Dream, seems to have won with 54% of the vote, looks anything but free and fair. Serious allegations include multiple voting, breaches of ballot secrecy, threats of personal or professional retaliation, pre-filled ballots, and violence against election observers.
Opponents of Georgian Dream, which centre on the country's president and four coalitions each made up of multiple parties, have accused the ruling party of orchestrating a "large-scale election fraud scheme," as President Salomé Zourabichvili said at a protest in Tbilisi on 27 October, the day after the vote.
They want fresh elections, overseen by an international electoral authority.
Georgian Dream has no intention of heeding those wishes, as it throws accusations of manipulation back at the opposition. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said the vote was marred by “unprecedented external interference” — not from Russia, but from the West.
The EU-Russia 'balance'
That divide was on display at post-election protests in the capital, where crowds shouted, "This is not the Georgian Dream. This is the Russian Nightmare.”
"I was born and raised under the Soviet Union. I have no intention of dying under it," said Nino, holding her grandson’s hand as he grasped an EU flag in the other.
Younger people without that memory said they worry that the kind of repression seen in Vladimir Putin's Russia could become increasingly the norm in Georgia.
"I had different plans for my future than being forced to flee my country out of fear of persecution for my beliefs," Maia, a student at Tbilisi University, said.
Protesters declined to give their last names.
Georgian Dream finds itself balancing these public sentiments against the reality that Russia is on Georgia's border and the EU is not. In applying for EU membership, which the European Council granted Georgia at the end of last year only to put it on ice this past summer due to a controversial NGO law, the party found itself in a bind.
Joining the EU means fully rejecting Russia, “which it cannot do,” Mamuka Andguladze, president of the Media Advocacy Coalition, a Tbilisi-based civil society organisation, told The Parliament.
At the same time, moving too close to Russia “would be political suicide,” given the widespread pro-EU sentiment among Georgians.
The result is a party that is both “misleading the public, spreading Kremlin disinformation with anti-Western messages," Mikheil Benidze, programme director at Georgia's European Orbit, an NGO, told The Parliament — and using campaign slogans such as “Towards Europe with dignity, peace, and prosperity.”
"It will take time for party supporters to realise that this government is steering in the opposite direction from EU integration,” he added.
The EU response
Despite the serious accusations, hard evidence of Russian interference remains hard to come by. The opposition has acknowledged it can be difficult to draw a direct line to the Kremlin.
"It took years to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 US elections or in the Brexit referendum," Nika Gvaramia, an opposition leader and former government minister, told The Parliament. “We cannot be asked to prove Russian meddling the next day.”
Officially, Georgia's state security service would investigate, but with trust in those kinds of institutions dwindling, Georgia’s pro-EU camp is hoping the EU will have more than just strongly worded statements to offer in support.
"We urgently need an international investigation led by the US and the EU," Gvaramia said.
All eyes are now on watching how far Georgian Dream will go to consolidate power. The central election commission, whose impartiality has been called into question, has asked the public prosecutor to investigate anyone calling the results fraudulent. That could include the president herself.
Either way, her days in office are numbered. Elected officials will pick her replacement 45 days after the start of the next legislative period. By the end of the year, Georgian Dream could control key institutions, with no indication that it will go back on the NGO and LGBT laws that are part of what's keeping EU accession talks on hold.
As far as the party sees things, "both were legitimised by the majority of Georgian citizens,” Mamuka Mdinaradze, Georgian Dream's executive secretary, told reporters.