(Photo by Seif Sallam via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 DEED)
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2024 will be a year remembered for elections big and small. From Vladimir Putin’s re-throning in March to the looming U.S. presidential election in November, commentators have deemed this year a decisive one for democracy around the globe. But behind those elections often talked about in mainstream media, dozens of low- and middle-income countries will be heading to the ballot box this year in unprecedented numbers. Among them lies the post-Soviet republic of Georgia, a nation of 3.7 million, located south of Russia and sandwiched between Azerbaijan, Armenia, Türkiye, and the Black Sea coast.
Georgia’s parliamentary elections are scheduled for late October, though they have already captured headlines in Western media. While some have called this election a decisive choice between leaning toward Russia or the West, other regional experts have argued that Georgian politics are more nuanced than that. As a post-Soviet country, Georgia undoubtedly has a balancing act to play between Russian influence and Western-style democracy. But since declaring its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia has charted its unique path mostly through free and fair elections, fighting the current between a rock and a hard place.
The Georgian Dream
After the instability of the 1990s, Western leaders held up Georgia as a herald of calm in the post-Soviet region. In their recent political history, Georgia has proven itself committed to democratic principles, starting with their non-violent Rose Revolution in 2003. This peaceful protest started a rising centre-right- and Western-leaning- political party called the United National Movement, whose leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, won the following year’s presidential elections with 96% of the vote.
Following this illustrative victory, however, Saakashvili faced immediate and consequential challenges — including a popular protest action against him in 2007 — which he responded to with force. He ran again for president in 2008 and won, but this time with “just over 50 percent of the [popular] vote.” He stepped out of politics after reaching his term limits as president in 2012. In recent years, Saakashvili has been a controversial figure in Georgia, forced into exile in Ukraine in 2013. Since his unexpected return to Georgia in 2021, he has lived in legal limbo and rapidly declining health at a hospital in Tbilisi. Many Georgians see Saakashvili’s fall from grace as a metaphor for the country’s democratic decline, with his party’s opposition lacking popular support going into this year’s elections.
In the vacuum of Saakashvili’s absence, a new party grew in popularity: the Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. While the Georgian Dream has gained support over the last decade, they have been widely criticized as Russia-friendly and technocratic — meaning that they conduct politics through an elite group of technical experts, promoting a political elite in a country that should instead focus on encouraging citizen participation in politics. Other critics, however, have pointed to the black-and-white nature of the previous critique, highlighting the nuance of Georgia’s geopolitical vulnerability following Russia’s 2008 invasion and the occupation of 20% of Georgia’s territory that followed.
A Consequential Election Year
Georgians have many reasons to go to the polls this October. As Spheres of Influence has previously reported, last year’s mass protests against a proposed “foreign agents” bill let folks express their discontent with Georgian Dream’s pro-Russia tendencies. The bill, which would have required organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to self-identify as “foreign agents” seemed to replicate an existent Russian law which has fueled censorship and public fear of the West. Protesters instead called to reject the law and make closer ties to the EU, with a recent poll suggesting that nearly nine in ten Georgians support EU membership.
Their path to joining the EU, however, is anything but clear. While in late 2023, they were formally recommended for EU candidate status, their full integration into the union may be years away. Open Society Georgia Foundation found that by Fall 2023, the country was still worryingly behind in meeting the requirements for full EU membership. Others worry that democratic backsliding is at higher stakes in this election, as it will be the first to follow new rules in Georgia’s 2017 constitutional amendments. It changed the election rules for Georgia’s president from one of direct democracy to an electoral college-style appointment. With Georgia’s parliament led by a party-appointed prime minister, the directly elected president was seen as a helpful check on power in a growingly polarized political climate.
Among other unfulfilled priorities include the need for de-oligarchization — a challenge to the ruling Georgian Dream party. While Ivanishvili has often withdrawn, shying away from the spotlight after briefly serving as prime minister from October 2012 to November 2013, he recently re-entered the spotlight ahead of the 2024 elections. If his role in the party over the last decade has been nebulous, so are his ambitions in 2024. Often seen as an éminence grise in Georgian politics, his emergence into the limelight as an “honorary chairman” of the party has raised eyebrows among reporters and experts covering the region.
Voting on the Issues that Matter
As the last year has proven, support for Georgian Dream is far from unanimous. A recent poll found that only 25% of Georgians would list the party as their first choice; Saakashvili’s United National Movement came in second at 13%, while eleven other opposition parties pulled through between 1% and 4%. Another recent poll found that half of all Georgians could not name a party that reflected their interests. In recent months, however, momentum seems to be building around current president Salome Zourabichvili. Elected to her first term as president in 2018, Zourabichvili hopes to unite the country’s EU advocates. However, Zourabichvili may find herself out of office at the end of October if the election does not swing her — or a political ally’s — way.
While last year’s protests seemed promising to bring a pro-Europe swing, anything is possible come October. Given Georgia’s delicate geopolitical vulnerabilities to its northern neighbour Russia, a significant turn in Russia’s war in Ukraine could prove consequential in the parliamentary elections. While Russia’s mock election will unlikely influence things, a high number of Russian expats fleeing mandatory conscription have re-ignited tensions in Georgia’s major cities. The country already faces similar struggles to those of other post-Soviet states, including non-existent healthcare and a turn towards Chinese investment for infrastructure in the latter’s Belt and Road Initiative. While it is hard to say what the elections will bring, eight months out, they will no doubt prove consequential for the country’s democratic future.
Edited by Gustavo Villela
