Fractious Opposition Puts Georgia’s Future in the Balance

The ruling party has announced that it will ban all major opposition parties if it wins the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 26. Georgian Dream plans to turn the country into a one-party system and says it is confident of a convincing victory in the vote.  

On September 8, the billionaire founder of Georgian Dream and now the country’s unofficial leader, Bidizina Ivanishvili, identified the opposition as one of the main threats to security and sovereignty at a pre-election rally. Former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, chairman of the ruling party, called the entire opposition a criminal gang, a continuation of the theme that Ivanishvili has previously pursued when he argued opponents are working for “the global party of war.” 

The Georgian Dream blacklist includes all those political parties that have a chance of polling above the 5% electoral threshold for winning seats in Parliament. In total, 27 coalitions or individual parties have registered to participate in the elections. 

Four opposition entities (including three coalitions and one separate party) have a chance of overcoming the 5% barrier, according to surveys of voters. They include Unity — National Movement (17.3%), For a Strong Georgia (12.8%), Gakharia for Georgia (11.2%) and Coalition for Change (9.9%).

This represents an improvement, of sorts. While there is no dominant umbrella group that could (and probably would) defeat the now-openly illiberal Georgian Dream party, there have at least been some efforts to coalesce.

The United National Movement, which is the biggest party in Unity and was in power from 2003 to 2012, tried to unite all pro-Western opposition parties around itself, but despite a range of attempts, including by President Salome Zourabichvili, it was not possible to form a united front. The smaller parties instead gathered in three separate electoral groupings.

In May, Zourabichvili presented the Georgian Charter, an action plan which laid out some basic principles of cooperation between the parties. It included an overhaul of state institutions, judicial reform, and accelerating European integration. Most of the opposition parties signed the charter but without uniting into one coalition. 

The opposition, in addition to fragmentation, has a problem of identification and identity. Voters find it difficult to be clear which small party is part of which alliance and what their promises to voters are. 

Some opposition parties and coalitions have changed their names several times and others are conducting the campaign under one name while they are registered with the Central Electoral Commission under another. 

Three small parties, even though they are already members of coalitions and plan to run on coalition lists, have also registered to participate in the elections as separate entities, adding to the confusion. 

The informal leader of both the United National Movement and the Unity coalition is former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is sick and in prison after being jailed for abuse of power during his time in office. The European Parliament has appealed for his release, calling his continued incarceration “a litmus test of Georgia’s respect for European values.“

Along with the United National Movement, the Unity grouping includes two other parties: the Strategy Agmashenebeli Party, which won 3.15% of the vote last time and had four deputies (the electoral threshold was set at 1% in 2020), and the European Georgia Party, which got 3.79% and five deputies in 2020. 

The second opposition grouping is made up of several small parties campaigning under the name Coalition for Change, but are, confusingly, registered with the Central Electoral Commission as New Union — Gvaramia Melia.  

Georgian Dream says it will also ban all parties that are part of this union, which is made up of the Akhali (New), Droa (It’s Time). Girchi – For More Freedom parties, as well as the Republican Party of Georgia and several civic activists.  

Akhali and Droa were formed after the 2020 elections, while Girchi participated in the previous elections, gaining 2.89%and four deputies before splitting in two.

The Republican Party is one of the oldest in Georgia and operated underground in the Soviet era. The party has never risked taking part in elections alone and has always joined a bloc or electoral coalition. 

The third opposition political center, For a Strong Georgia, is concentrated around new faces in politics and former officials of Georgian Dream, including the former chairman of parliament and a former deputy minister of defense. Lelo, headed by the millionaire and former banker Mamuka Khazaradze, is the leading party in this coalition. 

Lelo received 3.15% of the vote and four deputy mandates when it ran as a single party in 2020. The coalition also includes the Citizens Party, which won 1.33% and two parliamentary mandates last time. They are joined by two other parties created specifically for the election — For the People and Freedom Square. 

Gakharia — for Georgia, the fourth opposition camp, is composed mainly of former officials and deputies of Georgian Dream and led by former Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia. In 2020, all the leaders of this party ran for Georgian Dream and had government experience, mainly in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other security or law enforcement agencies.

Lelo and Gakharia did not want to work with the United National Movement, accusing it of authoritarian rule before 2012. This was even though representatives of both parties happily cooperated with the United National Movement until 2012. 

Leaders of Akhali, many of whom are former representatives of the United National Movement, argued it would be better to act as several coalitions in the elections so voters with different political tastes are not deprived of choice. 

At present, the opposition’s biggest enemy is its fragmentation and unwillingness to cooperate, playing into the hands of the Georgian Dream and the Kremlin. 

In August, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service could barely contain its glee that the pro-Western opposition in Georgia could not unite. “Georgian opposition forces, despite the efforts of the Americans, remain divided, and the coalitions created by them are very fragile,” it said in a statement.

If the opposition loses to Georgian Dream once again, it will have only itself to blame.

Dr. Beka Chedia is a researcher and professor of political science from Tbilisi, Georgia. He is a Tbilisi-based country expert, political analyst, and contributor to several leading think tanks and research centers in Europe and the US.  

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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