Georgians will go to the polls on Saturday to decide whether to end 12 years of increasingly authoritarian rule, in a decisive vote on their bid to join the European Union.
Some are describing this election as the most crucial vote since Georgians supported independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The ruling Georgian Dream party is widely expected to come first, but four opposition groups believe they can join forces to remove the party from power and revive Georgia’s EU process.
Four in five voters would be in favor of joining the EU in this South Caucasus state, which fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008.
Only last December did the EU nominate Georgia as a candidate. But a few months ago it froze that bid, accusing the government of democratic backsliding over a Russian law that requires groups to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive 20% of funding from abroad received.
About 3.5 million Georgians are eligible to vote between 04:00 GMT and 16:00 GMT in a high-stakes election that the opposition calls a choice between Europe or Russia but which the government portrays as a matter of peace or war.
Politics here have become increasingly bitterly polarized as Georgian Dream, led by Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili, seeks a fourth term in power.
If Ivanishvili’s party wins a large enough majority, he has vowed to ban the main opposition party, the United National Movement, over its actions while previously in power.
Georgian Dream, better known as GD, is expected to win around a third of the vote according to opinion polls, although these are widely considered unreliable. If the GD is to be ousted, all four main opposition groups will need to win more than 5% of the vote to qualify for the 150-seat parliament.
Pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili has backed the opposition and declared that the elections will end “one-party rule in Georgia”.
She has agreed to a charter with the four major groups so that if they win, a technocrat government will fill the immediate vacuum. It would then overturn laws seen as damaging to Georgia’s path to the EU and call early elections.
Tina Bokuchava, chair of the main opposition party, United National Movement, insists that all credible polls put the opposition ahead.
!["What [Bidzina] Ivanishvili does not understand that democracy is about choices. The cycle of political retaliation must end"Source: Tina Bokuchava, Source description: Chairman of the Opposition United National Movement, Image: Tina Bokuchava](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/4_LKDotPGvfT3p96tQ42Sw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTgyOQ--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/bbc_us_articles_995/d1af047a3a53939944e1c06d1459af94)
But Georgian Dream has told voters that an opposition victory will trigger a war with Russia, and that message has proven effective outside the big cities.
Party billboards across the country share photos of devastated cities in Ukraine next to peaceful Georgia, with the slogan: “No to war! Choose peace.”
GD’s claim against the opposition is that it will help the West open a new front in Russia’s war in Ukraine, while Georgian Dream will keep peace with its Russian neighbor, which went to war with Georgia in 2008 and still has 20% of its territory. .
Although the ruling party’s claim is baseless and its billboards have been widely condemned, its slogans appear to have resonated with at least some of the public.
In Kaspi, an industrial town northwest of Tbilisi, a 41-year-old woman told the BBC: “I don’t like Georgian Dream, but I hate the [opposition United] National Movement – and at least we will have peace.” Another woman named Lali, 68, said the opposition might bring Europe closer, but also war.
Hours before the polls opened, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy sharply criticized GD’s election campaign.
It pointed to examples of voter ID cards confiscated, threats and intimidation, Russian-sponsored disinformation operations and domestic campaigns.
The BBC spoke to a voter, Aleksandre, in a village northwest of the capital, who said he had been threatened by a local GD man with losing his job if he did not register to vote for Georgian Dream: “I am a little afraid of his threat, but what can I do?”
However, Georgian Dream claims it has made the elections more transparent, with a new electronic system for counting votes.
“For twelve years we have had an opposition that has continuously questioned the legitimacy of the Georgian government. And that is absolutely not a normal situation,” said Maka Bochorishvili, head of parliament’s EU integration committee.
“All this speculation about forcing people to vote for certain political parties – in the end you are alone and you cast your vote, and electronic machines count those votes,” Bochorishvili said.
Critics say the changes have been introduced too hastily and that there are genuine fears in some places that the vote is not actually secret.
Not far from central Tbilisi, Vano Chkhikvadze points to graffiti painted in red on the walls and ground outside his office at the Civil Society Foundation.
After the “foreign influence” law was passed this summer, despite massive protests in central Tbilisi and other major cities, he said he was personally labeled a traitor to the state by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.
“We got phone calls in the middle of the night. Our children even got phone calls. They were threatened.”
Ahead of the vote, the EU warned that Georgian Dream’s actions “signal a shift towards authoritarianism”.
Whoever wins on Saturday, the loser probably won’t accept defeat easily.
