Georgia's Democracy is on the Brink
Tomorrow's election will determine whether the country bordering Russia and the Black Sea tilts towards Moscow or the West
TBILISI, Georgia -- Tbilisi Pride is one of the organizations most threatened by democratic backsliding in Georgia, a former Soviet republic with aspirations to join the European Union. Its headquarters in the capital Tbilisi are on the top floor of a walkup and on its small balcony hang LGBTQ pride flags, an EU flag, and a Georgian flag. The pro-Russian ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD), has demonized the group, and in 2021, far-right thugs climbed up to the balcony and ransacked the offices after the group tried to hold a pride parade.
As Georgian Dream vies for a fourth consecutive term in power in parliamentary elections scheduled for October 26, Tbilisi Pride director Tamar Jakeli had her face posted on a GD television advertisement with the words: "No to moral degradation." Although she takes security precautions around town, she is nonchalant about her vilification: when asked whether her comments could be recorded, she shrugged and said "I've already said all the wrong things that can get me into jail." Jakeli said the group is "doomed" if the party wins another term and continues its crackdown on civil society and LGBTQ rights. "Will we be on the barricades? Will we be packing our suitcases? Will we be brutally attacked? Will we manage to flee to safety? Will we be celebrating? Everything is up in the air. We have no idea."
Georgia's elections will decide whether the country of 3.7 million remains a liberal democracy. In 2012, the Georgian Dream won elections after the pro-Western government led by President Mikheil Saakashvili lost a war with Russia in 2008 and became increasingly authoritarian. Initially, GD, whose honorary chairman is Bidzina Ivanshvili, a reclusive billionaire who made his fortune in the 1990s in Russia, governed moderately with coalition partners and sought to balance relations with Moscow and the West.
However, particularly since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, GD has tilted towards Moscow and relations with the West are at a post-independence low. Now, all over Tbilisi, the ruling party has advertisements showing black-and-white photographs of destroyed Ukrainian cities next to color photographs of intact Georgian cities. "No to war!" read the caption of the black-and-white photos, referencing the opposition. “Choose peace!” read the color photos, referencing the Georgian Dream. (I wrote about this rhetoric recently for Internationale Politik Quarterly.)
In Georgia, you would need to silence up to 500 people—500 to 550 people. That's it. The issue is closed. No one will be saying anything. You won't hear anything anymore.
In December 2023, the EU granted Georgia candidate status to join, which around 80 percent of Georgians favor. In the months following, the ruling party, which is campaigning on accession to Europe "with dignity," passed laws that mirror Russia's approach to clamping down on civil society and are at odds with joining the EU's club of democracies.
In May, after weeks of street protests, the Georgian parliament passed a law branding Western-backed independent media and NGOs as "foreign agents" by requiring them to register with the government or face hefty fines. In August, the government said it would seek a constitutional mandate in the elections to ban the "collective" United National Movement (UNM), the party of former President Saakashvili. (By adding the word "collective," it effectively means any entity opposing the government is at risk of being shuttered.) In September, the government passed a law on "family values and the protection of minors,” providing a legal way to censor LGBTQ-themed books and films, ban transgender surgeries, and outlaw pride events.
The anti-gay law is not in effect yet and the enforcement of the "foreign agent" law has been paused. However, that may change if the Georgian Dream wins another term. It has a plurality -- but not an absolute majority -- of support in opinion polling. Gigi Gigiadze, a former Georgian diplomat who is now a senior researcher at the Economic Policy Research Center, said that arresting several hundred activists would turn the country into something resembling autocratic Belarus. "In Georgia, you would need to silence up to 500 people -- 500 to 550 people. That's it. The issue is closed. No one will be saying anything. You won't hear anything anymore."
The UNM and three other opposition groupings are uniting against the Georgian Dream in the upcoming elections. They are hoping that GD will not be able to convince or buy off enough lawmakers from smaller parties to cobble together a parliamentary majority; they would then get their shot at forming a coalition government. They have signed a document created by Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili known as the Georgian Charter, promising a technocratic government and a commitment to restart EU negotiations, which are currently at a standstill following GD's authoritarian turn. (Since 2018 when the country transitioned from a presidential to a parliamentary system, the Georgian president has had far less power than the prime minister chosen by Parliament.)
However, unlike Poland, whose similarly polycentric coalition led by Donald Tusk unseated the right-wing populist party Law and Justice in 2023, the Georgian opposition lacks a central figure and a central message. Former President Saakashvilli remains unpopular among wide swaths of the electorate; he was imprisoned by Georgian authorities upon returning to the country in 2021 and remains jailed.
Salome Samadashvili is an opposition lawmaker who left Saakshvilli's UNM over its lack of commitment to "democracy and checks and balances," and is now running as part of one of the new party groupings opposing GD. Speaking in a conference room at the bustling office of her party, Lelo for Georgia, she said: "The only way forward for this country is to have a coalition government. When you have a coalition in parliament, you have internal control mechanisms."
However, the opposition lawmaker Samadashvili faces the problem that many Georgians, particularly outside the capital have government jobs, and GD is leaning heavily on these voters to turn out for them. Samadashvili said, "In one region of 4,000, there are 168 people registered as caretakers to a cemetery. In parliament, I asked whether they are expecting a zombie apocalypse." She added, "It's like this everywhere. They have people on fake payrolls, and then they expect them to vote for them. It's a form of modern slavery, in my view." Other tactics that are clouding the fairness of the vote include deploying "territorial groups" of police officers on the lookout for election "violations" led by an official under U.S. sanctions and pardoning prisoners ahead of the election.
Civil society activists and opposition politicians believe that it is likelier that GD will stick to its intimidation tactics rather than change the results outright, like autocrats in Venezuela did in 2024 and Belarus in 2020. Asked if GD would try to manipulate the outcome, Saba Brachveli, a lawyer who works for the Open Society Foundation, said: "They do it before Election Day. They do voter suppression; they do vote buying." Under Western pressure, GD reversed a plan to declare Transparency International (TI) an "electoral subject" and bar it from monitoring elections. Now, TI and other NGOs as well as international observers will be monitoring the vote.
Despite GD's heavy-handed tactics, the election outcome is very hard to predict as opinion polling is unreliable. However, the stakes could not be higher: Georgians will be choosing not only whether they align geopolitically with Russia or the West, but whether their government resembles Russian autocracy or Western democracy. Mikheil Benidze, Programs Director at Georgia's European Orbit, said: "This election is about whether Georgia is going to be a sovereign independent state, or whether it will be independent on paper, but a Russian proxy state carrying out the instructions of the Kremlin."
This article was written as part of a study trip organized by n-ost and funded by Erste Stiftung.