Though the 2024 election year is drawing to a close, there are still a few pivotal elections to watch, starting with the one with probably the greatest effect on the world, the U.S. presidential elections just next week.
That race is tighter than ever before with Harris and Trump head-to-head in many states, for example in Georgia, where different polls predict a 49-51 percent Trump win. On the toss of a coin, basically.
In another Georgia, another close contest ended this weekend, as citizens headed to the polling stations to elect a new (old) government.
Though there were a few exceptions who predicted that opposition parties would collectively gain 53 percent and Georgian Dream only 34, most polls conducted during the run up to the elections all predicted a win for the ruling Georgian Dream party – and they were right. Georgian Dream secured a 53 percent win, enough to form a (new) government. The four pro-Western opposition groups collectively obtained about 38 percent.
As all the votes of the diaspora are counted, this result might change somewhat (just like it did in Moldova a week ago – but not significantly. Early statistics show a clear imbalance between votes cast in Tbilisi, where Georgian Dream lost out to the combined opposition in some parts of the city, and the rural areas, where it sometimes won margins up to 90 percent, another similarity to Moldova’s results.
Competing narratives appeared already before the elections (think: articles pointing at undue Russian influence via Georgia’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili – another parallel with Moldova where the same “role” was “played” by exiled oligarch Ilan Shor) and became abundant after.
In one narrative, the “Georgian government has been effectively exploiting the country’s war trauma”, framing the elections as a choice between “war and peace”, the EU and Russia, like Josep Borrell did.
Salome Zourabichvili, the country’s president declared that she didn’t accept the results, and, standing in front of leading pro-Western opposition politicians, she called for protests against the outcome. Opposition politician Tina Bokuchava declared that “the Georgian people have cast a vote for the European future of this country, and therefore we will not accept these falsified results published by the CEC (Central Election Commission)”.
In this narrative, the OSCE’s report confirmed some fraudulent events, cases of vote buying and other possible violations of election laws, “alongside imbalances in financial resources” and a “divisive campaign atmosphere”, supporting the claim of rigged results and foreign interference.
Even if the picture is more nuanced: though there were confirmed irregularities and the elections were indeed marred by an uneven playing field, the OSCE also concluded that the candidates could generally campaign freely, and voters were offered a wide choice. The legal framework was also found being mostly adequate for holding democratic elections.
For some reasons, this part of the message failed to resonate with Western politicians, who, so far, have mostly called for thorough investigations into reports of election-related violations, supporting the opposition.
But in another narrative, the government in Tbilisi made a realistic decision based on geography and geopolitical realities: thousands of kilometres away from Brussels, at the very neighbourhood of the angry bear, the question is how long you dare to poke it and how much trust you put in the outside world to help you out.
Once the poster child of hopeful would-be EU members, most of the population is still pro-EU. Only, they had learned that it was mostly a dream, and one that didn’t necessarily bring the country forward as proved by the disastrous end of the former, pro-EU Saakashvili-government, that was marked by human rights abuses, a tight grip on media, failed investment projects and widespread corruption.
While this vote was portrayed as a make-or-break election determining the country’s future in the EU, in reality, EU membership has been mostly a dream only (much like for the rest of the region), and the likelihood of quick accession is meagre, at best, or non-existent, given the general reluctance of most current EU members towards enlargement. Georgia’s short lived candida-status was suspended merely a year after it was granted, when Brussels got dissatisfied with recently adapted legislation.
From one point of view, the war in Ukraine proved that the almighty Russian army was a mere legend, and it was possible to resist, to an extent and with strong Western help.
But it also proved that Western help had limits, while Russia’s hands reach far, and its retribution comes swiftly, both Moldova and Georgia have firsthand experience with that. Kazakhstan has just learned this as a temporary Russian ban was announced on several of its key agricultural imports following its refusal to join BRICS – leaving farmers with tons of produce in harvest season, with no clear market alternative.
Prompted by this realization, and following the example of a few other countries in and around the former Soviet Union, Georgia has started to explore a different approach: more balanced ties with Russia, China and the rest of the world, at the expense of its Western ties.
It is not that Georgia has taken a complete U-turn or has forgotten its past with Russia. While Tbilisi declined to impose sanctions on Moscow after it invaded Ukraine, Georgia is the only country in its region that has no diplomatic relations with Russia since 2008 (since Moscow occupied 20 percent of its territory).
