Following this weekend’s fraughtly awaited election ‘results’ in Georgia – as important for the country’s direction as any since the end of the Cold War – a potentially explosive situation is developing. While exit polls suggested the Georgian Dream (the incumbent, pro-Kremlin party) would gain no more than 42 per cent to the collective opposition’s 58 per cent, Sunday morning saw GD leader Bidzina Ivanishvili declaring victory and claiming 54 per cent of the vote. ‘It is rare for any party anywhere in the world to achieve such success in such a difficult situation,’ Ivanishvili crowed.
Yet amidst widespread allegations of rigged ballots, intimidation and voter fraud, opposition parties are refusing to accept the result. Tina Bokuchava, Chairwoman of the oppositionist United National Movement (leader of the anti-government Unity To Save Georgia coalition) has announced that ‘we do not accept the results of this stolen election, and we do not intend to recognise the outcome of this stolen election.’ President Salome Zourabichvili – a long-term enemy of the government – has added her voice to the chorus, saying the country had been the victim of a ‘Russian special operation’ and urging Georgians to gather on Monday night in Tbilisi and protest a ‘total falsification, a total stealing of your votes.’ Meanwhile, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, acknowledging the potential for violent unrest (something opposition-activists broadly maintain they wish to avoid at all costs), has warned that any ‘illegal’ actions ‘will be met with a very hard reaction from the state.’
‘There’s no quick fix here,’ George admits.
All this reflects a perilous schism in Georgian society. As anyone who’s spent time in the country will confirm, the younger generations there are almost boundlessly pro-western: often fluent in English, sold on ‘western liberal values’ (such as they are) and ragingly keen for EU membership. The movement of Georgian society in this direction, however slow, incremental and prone to setbacks, has to a great extent been the narrative of their lives and a bellwether of their country’s progress.
At the same time, their government has for the past 12 years, for all their proclamations of EU-friendliness, been pushing Georgia in a totally different direction. Ivanishvili, an oligarch who made his vast fortune in the smash-and-grab free market capitalism of 1990s Russia and founded Georgian Dream in 2012, has been seeking ever closer ties with the Kremlin. For some time now, his party’s policies have been a slavish aping of the very worst aspects of Putin’s rule.
A ‘foreign agent’ bill, echoing Russia’s in 2012, was passed into law in May this year, requiring any NGO receiving more than 20 per cent of its funding from abroad to declare themselves an ‘agent of foreign influence’ (associations like the Union of Christians and the Professional Union of Farmers and Agricultural Workers of Georgia have since been outed as, quite literally, fitting the bill). Anti-LGBT laws (again, straight out of the Kremlin playbook) were introduced last month, banning same-sex marriages and adoptions, and prohibiting depictions of LGBT relations in the media. One crumb of comfort for opponents is that, in yesterday’s vote, GD fell short of the 113 seats they required for a constitutional majority (securing only 90), thus denying them the chance to ban opposition parties outright.
In the recent campaign, the slinging match between government and opposition reached new heights. GD claimed the latter would set the Georgia on a course to an all-out war with Russia and destroy the country’s traditional Christian values. The coalition, meanwhile, warned that keeping Ivanishvili’s party in power would spell the end of the EU dream and a return to Soviet-style repression. It’s a situation worryingly reminiscent of pre-Maidan Ukraine under its fallen pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych, and it remains to be seen – however peaceful the opposition intend to keep their protests – whether events will unfold in the same calamitous way.
George, a software engineer and opposition activist I spoke to a few months ago and caught up with in the election’s aftermath yesterday, sees parallels with another post-Soviet country. Reflecting on four more years of Georgian Dream – ‘no democratic country maintains single-party dominance for 16 years’ – he added that Georgia is ‘witnessing a Belarus-style trajectory, complete with congratulations from Moscow. This threatens to undo decades of progress towards Western democracy… The EU’s hesitance to risk another Hungary in its ranks could leave us isolated and vulnerable.’
George is openly sceptical about the election results. The fact that much of the voting was done by computer rather than in voting booths – the triumph, he says, of the ‘allure’ of modern technology over ‘the need for robust democratic institutions and transparency’ – left many worried their names and political choices would be registered with the authorities. The coalition’s assurance to the public that ‘no one will know who you voted for’ has, it seems, not been taken on trust.
At the same time, Edison Research, a US-based firm which ‘has established strong credibility in Georgia’ and whose ‘exit polls have historically been within a few percentage points of final results’, made projections a staggering 12 points away from GD’s final 54 per cent. Only the polling firm Gorbi correctly predicted the final outcome – in a survey commissioned by the pro-government Imedi TV. George says this suggested ‘predetermined results’ and a put-up job.
Today, the opposition’s plans seem in complete disarray – no one expects Ivanishvili and his party to surrender power whatever the evidence produced, nor to take a lenient approach to those who attack them. Yet George stresses that violent protest is counter-productive – much better the more rational, stealthy kind ‘that targets the system exactly where it hurts.’ He identifies three areas in which activists like him, as well as the wider world, can make a difference.
First, he says, agencies ‘need to forensically document and expose the technical mechanisms of this fraud. Electronic systems always leave traces. If we can definitively prove manipulation of the electronic voting systems, potentially with Russian involvement, it becomes much harder for the West to continue a “business as usual” approach.’
Second, international pressure needs to be focused ‘where it hurts most – Ivanishvili’s wealth.’ The GD founder, George tells me, ‘has openly admitted that his money is all cares about. Unlike Putin, who’s relatively insulated, Ivanishvili’s assets are largely accessible to Western sanctions. Targeted financial pressure, especially if tied to specific democratic benchmarks, could force significant concessions.’
And third, he says, Georgia’s civil society infrastructure – ‘independent media, NGOs, and professional associations’ – need to be rigorously maintained, ‘because these will be Georgian Dream’s next targets. [They have] openly said this and we’ve seen this pattern in Russia and Belarus. Protecting these institutions now is crucial for maintaining any capacity for organized resistance.’
Yet these things are much more easily said than done. ‘There’s no quick fix here,’ George admits. ‘What we’re really fighting for now is to prevent Georgia from becoming another Belarus while we rebuild opposition capacity. The immediate goal isn’t necessarily removing Georgian Dream from power… It’s preventing them from establishing the kind of total control that would make peaceful change impossible in the future.’
Yet given Kremlin backing for Ivanishvili’s party, many of us, having seen the past decade’s events playing out in Belarus and Ukraine, will be expecting anything but ‘peaceful change’ in Georgia – non-violent resistance or not.