Georgia’s governing pro-Russian Georgian Dream party won the country’s general election on October 26 claiming to have received just under 54% of the vote and winning 89/150 seats. The pro-European opposition parties have alleged vote rigging and violence. Most damning of all, Salome Zourabichvili, Georgia’s figurehead President, had called the results illegitimate and called for protests against the results.
Exit polls told a different story than the official results, showing Georgian Dream at just above 40% and a coalition of pro-Western opposition parties at just over 50%. In some districts, the discrepancies were so large that they were statistically impossible. In other words, the reports of ballot stuffing and vote rigging, which were denied by Georgian Dream’s leader and Georgia’s PM, Irakli Kobakhidze, clearly happened.
Before the election, Kobakhidze threatened to ban opposition parties if he won, accusing them of being criminal elements. This, coupled with a recent EU report stating that there is no immediate path forward to resume accession talks, shows a clear shift towards authoritarianism. All of this is in spite of an overwhelming majority of Georgians being in favour of pursuing EU membership, with some polls showing support as high as 89%.
Georgian Dream was founded in 2012 by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a Georgian oligarch who made most of his money in Russia. Initially, the party pursued Euro-Atlantic integration for Georgia, but in recent years, it has moved in an illiberal pro-Russian direction. In December 2023, Georgia was granted EU candidacy status but this status was suspended in July following new legislation which forced NGOs receiving more than 20% of funding from abroad to register as foreign agents.
Other contentious directions pursued by Georgian Dream include the implementation of Russian-and-Hungarian-style legislation which aims to ban “LGBT propaganda”, and the advocacy of conspiracies about a ‘Global War Party’ which supposedly heavily influences the EU and US. Georgian Dream claims that this cabal has prolonged the War in Ukraine, a belief that shapes their ambivalent stance on the issue.
The acceleration of Georgia’s pro-Russian shift since the invasion of Ukraine is no coincidence. Since the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, two Kremlin-backed regions of Georgia have broken away from the rest of Georgia. To this day, Russian troops remain in these regions of Georgia and support their separatist governments. There have been concerns that Russia could escalate this conflict, especially after it did so in Ukraine where it backed similar separatist regimes in Donbas. However, with Georgia’s pro-Russian turn, there have been suggestions from Russia’s foreign minister that Russia may be open to a deal which resolves the dispute over the 20% of Georgian territory currently controlled by Russia and its proxies.
Few foreign colleagues have congratulated Georgian Dream following its supposed victory besides its immediate neighbours in Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister. Orbán, who also took an ambivalent position on the war in Ukraine, congratulated Georgian Dream on not allowing its country to become “a second Ukraine”. Orbán, who is a soft Eurosceptic and seeks good relations with Russia, wrote during his post-election visit that Georgia as a “conservative, Christian and pro-European state” needs Hungarian “support on their European path”. Other foreign leaders such as Joe Biden have expressed alarm at the results and democratic backsliding.
Officially, Georgian Dream is still committed to European integration but the model it claims to desire is evidently ‘Orbánist’ in nature. Supporters of the party, whom the exit polls show are a substantial minority of the public, claim allegiance to the Georgian Dream as they desire to avoid war with Russia and promote socially conservative values whilst pursuing greater integration with Europe.
The popularity of the main opposition party, the United National Movement, is also limited by its own poor track record in government. The party lost power due to widespread protests, human rights scandals, and unpopular neoliberal economic reforms. This unpopularity led to splits in the party and the broader opposition movement providing a favourable environment for Georgian Dream to operate in.
Uncertainty now hangs over Georgia. Protests have diminished since significant public unrest sweeped Georgia in response to contentious foreign agents legislation. While the opposition has made it clear they do not recognise the results and sanctions have been imposed over the fraudulent results, the future of the country appears to be in Georgian Dream’s hands.
