TBILISI – In Georgia’s 2012 election, then-President Mikheil Saakashvili’s pro-Western party was defeated by Georgian Dream, a party led by the Russian-backed oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. Though widely hailed at the time as a democratic triumph, astute observers warned against celebrating.
One such observer was Georgia’s former economy minister, the late Kakha Bendukidze, a businessman and philanthropist who wryly remarked that with Ivanishvili’s victory, the country “made a step forward in terms of democracy, but sometimes when you make a step forward, you step in shit.”
When friends who supported Georgian Dream in 2012 assured me they would vote the party out of power if it failed to deliver, I warned them that doing so would be far harder than they expected.
Unfortunately, as Georgia’s October 26 parliamentary elections showed, my prediction was accurate. According to independent polling organizations like Edison Research, which conducted both pre-election and exit polls, Georgian Dream was soundly defeated by a coalition of four opposition parties. But as we celebrated our victory, the Central Election Commission (CEC) abruptly reported results giving Ivanishvili’s party a lead that exceeded the exit-poll numbers by around 15%.
Post-election fatigue quickly gave way to deep confusion and uncertainty. Although we had received numerous reports of polling issues and other legal violations throughout the day, the full extent of the government’s electoral fraud became clear after the official results were announced.
In the lead-up to the election, the government introduced a new system of electronic voting machines. While many Georgians assumed that the government would make such a change only if it served its own interests, some NGOs, political parties, and international organizations believed that the new system provided stronger safeguards for free and fair elections.
The skeptics were right. Although the Georgian opposition is still investigating the specifics of the government’s electoral fraud, it is clear that Georgia has not witnessed such massive election interference since its first post-Soviet election 33 years ago.
In Tbilisi and other large cities, Georgian Dream clearly lost. But in many rural areas the scale of manipulation seems staggering, and independent election-observer groups have called for annulment of the results in over 246 precincts – covering more than 400,000 voters – citing grave violations. Given that the new system did not manage to secure ballot secrecy, some NGOs are calling for total annulment of the results and new elections.
Encouragingly, the United States and the European Union have called for an investigation into the election, and no Western leader – aside from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – has recognized the results as legitimate.
To address this unprecedented election fraud, the US and the EU must support an international investigative mission and clearly state that the election’s outcome will not be recognized as legitimate until the investigation is complete. And they should emphasize that refusal to cooperate with the investigation will trigger immediate sanctions against Ivanishvili and his allies.
One promising approach would be to launch an investigative mission under the EU’s common security and defense policy. An independent investigative mission would provide essential resources and credibility, especially since Georgia’s opposition parties and civil-society groups lack the capacity to investigate a crime of this scale on their own.
The EU has an obvious stake in finding out what happened in Georgia. In today’s era of hybrid warfare, electoral manipulation has become one of Russia’s go-to tactics in its ongoing assault on Western democracies. These countries’ leaders should treat Georgia as an opportunity to confront an urgent security challenge to which they, too, are exposed.
Meanwhile, Georgian President Salome Zourabishvili has announced that she will not exercise her constitutional authority to convene the first parliamentary session after an election, accusing Georgian Dream of “working hand-in-hand with Russia.” Similarly, newly elected opposition lawmakers have stated that they will boycott all parliamentary proceedings if the election results reported by the Ivanishvili-controlled CEC are not validated by international observers.
Amid this growing backlash, Ivanishvili may have to convene the new parliament’s first session with just Georgian Dream MPs in attendance. Should that happen, Georgia would effectively become a one-party state with an illegitimate government.
Whether Ivanishvili is prepared to take this step remains to be seen. Nevertheless, he appears intent on following in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s footsteps, transforming Georgia from a democracy into an authoritarian state where elections are little more than formalities. For over a decade, he has systematically undermined democratic institutions while persuading Georgians that he is a pro-Western leader, despite having made his fortune in Russia.
Ivanishvili probably thought he could maintain this pro-Western façade indefinitely, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the EU’s 2023 decision to grant Georgia candidate status, forced him to reveal his pro-Putin sympathies. Once unmasked, he recognized that his chances of winning a fair election were slim.
Georgia now finds itself on the brink of a profound political transformation. If the West fails to support the country’s opposition in challenging the election results, its 30-year-old democracy could come to an end.
This outcome would derail Georgia’s EU accession and mark a strategic defeat for Western countries. Over the past 30 years, Georgia has been the West’s most reliable ally in the region, benefiting from substantial US and EU aid aimed at helping the country modernize and build its democracy. Allowing Georgian Dream’s electoral fraud to go unchallenged would squander decades of hard-won progress and deal a major blow to the global effort to protect democracy against authoritarian threats.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
