Georgia, a strategically important Caucasus country, will hold a parliamentary election on Saturday that could determine the country’s geopolitical orientation for years to come as it is pulled between Russia, China and the West.
The governing Georgian Dream party is looking for a broad mandate to assert its conservative course, one that has already steered the country away from the West and closer to Russia and China.
Georgia’s splintered opposition has been trying to challenge Georgian Dream’s ambitions by calling on voters to unite and break the party’s 12-year rule and push the country toward memberships in the European Union and NATO.
It is hard to predict which political force is likely to win. The governing party and the opposition both claim to be ahead, citing partisan polls predicting widely divergent results.
Either way, the result will most likely reverberate both in the Caucasus and beyond.
“It is a turning point for Georgia,” said Dimitri Moniava, the head of the Strategic Communications Center, a research group in Tbilisi. “The ruling party has put everything at stake.”
What is at stake?
Both the governing party and the opposition portray the election as an existential choice for Georgia, which has been among the most pro-Western states to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet Union.
The governing party says a working relationship with Russia, Georgia’s giant neighbor, makes sense if it does not want to experience the same fate as Ukraine. The opposition says that this would undermine its efforts to integrate with Western Europe.
Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder of Georgian Dream, has accused the opposition of serving the interests of foreign actors, who he said wanted to drag Georgia into the war in Ukraine.
In May, the governing party passed a contentious law that has been widely seen as a tool to limit the influence of foreign-funded advocacy groups. The passage of the law prompted protests in the country’s capital, Tbilisi, and beyond.
Like in Russia, the government has also targeted the L.G.B.T.Q. community, saying it promotes lifestyles that are counter to the country’s traditional values. In September, Parliament passed a package of laws that ban “alternative” forms of marriage, the public promotion of same-sex relationships and gender-affirming surgery, among other measures.
While the opposition and the governing party cast their campaigns in geopolitical terms, many in Georgia are more concerned with day-to-day troubles, analysts say.
“Many voters are not interested in these abstractions,” said Mr. Moniava, the researcher. “They are interested in unemployment and poverty.”
Why is Georgia important?
Set at the center of the Caucasus region, Georgia has been at the intersection of great power interests for centuries.
Its highways connect Turkey with Russia and provide the main link for Armenia to the outside world. Its pipelines carry crude oil and gas to Turkey and the Mediterranean Sea from the Caspian Sea, bypassing Russia. Its ports serve as a gateway for goods traveling between Europe and Central Asia.
In May, the governing party said it had awarded a contract to build the country’s first deep-sea port to a state-owned Chinese company. Contractors from China are already expanding a key highway that links eastern and western Georgia through the mountains, and are also working on a project that would greatly facilitate travel to Russia.
Who rules Georgia?
Since 2012, Georgia has been governed by Georgian Dream, which has been led from behind the scenes for about a decade by Mr. Ivanishvili, a reclusive tycoon whose estimated net worth rivals the country’s annual budget.
Mr. Ivanishvili, 68, made his fortune in the 1990s in Russia by taking control of major aluminum, iron ore enrichment and other plants during a period of privatization.
In the early 2000s, Mr. Ivanishvili moved to Georgia, where he initially supported overhauls conducted by Georgia’s pro-Western president at the time, Mikheil Saakashvili. But gradually, the two grew apart. In elections in 2012, Mr. Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream coalition defeated Mr. Saakashvili’s party. Mr. Ivanishvili was prime minister in 2012 and 2013.
After a brief and largely unsuccessful political career in Ukraine, Mr. Saakashvili returned in 2021 from exile to Georgia, where he was arrested. He is now serving a six-year sentence in Georgia on charges related to abuse of power that he says were politically motivated.
The governing party is generally but not exclusively supported by older voters living in regions outside the main cities. They are often disenchanted with the neoliberal policies of Mr. Saakashvili’s government in the 2000s. Many are nostalgic for the Soviet period, which they see as a time of stability.
What about the opposition?
The opposition has splintered into four major parties. These include Unity — to Save Georgia, centered around the party of Mr. Saakashvili, the former president; and Coalition for Change, politicians who have distanced themselves from Mr. Saakashvili.
Two other major political forces in the opposition include Strong Georgia, led by Mamuka Khazaradze, a banker, and For Georgia, the party of Giorgi Gakharia, a former prime minister.
Support for these groups generally comes from urban and younger voters who see their political future with Western Europe. They often speak English as a second language as opposed to members of older generations who speak Russian.
The Georgian opposition has experienced internal conflicts that prevented it from presenting a united front, and it is unclear whether it will be able to band together in a coalition if the groups together manage to beat Georgian Dream.
How is the war in Ukraine affecting things?
The governing party has plastered cities across the country, with campaign ads juxtaposing images of devastated Ukrainian cities and infrastructure with photographs of shining new facilities in Georgia. The slogan reads: “Say no to war! Choose peace.”
Opposition parties have condemned the ads as tone deaf. Georgia’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, who is separately elected and supports the opposition, said in a post on Facebook that she had never seen something “so shameful, so offensive to our culture.”
But the governing party’s message has resonated with the fears of many Georgians.
In 2008, Georgia fought a war with Russia that lasted five days but left deep wounds.
“We want peace, that’s what we want,” Mamuli Khimshiashvili, 70, a nurse, said at a rally for the governing party in Tbilisi on Wednesday. “We don’t want war.”
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