TBILISI -- With the ruling Georgian Dream party risking estrangement from the West amid a crackdown on dissent, Georgia’s opposition parties appear to agree on one thing: In their view, winning national elections this fall is essential to preserving democracy in their Caucasus state.
What they can’t agree on is how to do it.
A new 5 percent threshold for parliament is prodding smaller opposition parties that could prove critical to unseating the Georgian Dream majority to join forces to avoid their share of the vote going to waste. But disputes have persisted over whether to form a single opposition front -- which would be dominated by the largest party, the former ruling United National Movement (ENM) -- or run in smaller party alliances. That question, along with missed deadlines even where cooperation has emerged, has left some smaller parties unwilling to seek out partners or grudgingly going it alone.
“We have such incompetent people in the opposition,” a voter, Sergi Khetsuriani, complained to fellow government critics on a social media forum recently. “The one thing they need to do is to unite, and they can't even do that.”
Georgia’s increasingly combative president, Salome Zurabishvili, agrees that the stakes are high, repeatedly describing the October voting as a referendum on the country’s “European future.”
Tbilisi’s Western partners have hinted as much, too. Washington has announced that bilateral relations are under review over a new “foreign agent” law targeting media and civil society, a violent crackdown on protests, and “disinformation and negative rhetoric about the West.” Brussels has “stopped for now” Georgia’s EU accession process and frozen financial assistance to Tbilisi.
The spoils are amplified further by a newly enacted system, set out in the 2017 constitution, that excludes parties under 5 percent from parliament and redistributes their votes.
"I am sick and tired of [opposition leaders'] egos, now that the election matters more than ever,” a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak more candidly told RFE/RL.
The diplomat said cooperation within the opposition has been hindered by personal squabbles between leaders and even petty issues like campaign colors and shared parking spaces.
"By now, the opposition should have a very good strategy,” the diplomat said, “and so far I don't see it."
Clearing The Bar
Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanashvili in 2012, will be seeking its fourth consecutive ruling majority in October.
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters and opposition parties accuse the ruling party of leading the country toward Russia and authoritarianism, exemplified by parliament’s passage of the "foreign agent" law in May, despite Zurabishvili’s veto.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and other party officials argue that they are the only force that can maintain national sovereignty in the face of foreign forces that don’t have Georgia’s best interests in mind.
Polls historically show the combined opposition of around half a dozen parties has about the same level of support as Georgian Dream, somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the public. A number of them hover below 5 percent, suggesting they could miss parliament and thus inadvertently contribute to a Georgian Dream victory.
Some in the opposition argue that the simplest way to prevent such an outcome is for all of those parties to unite on the ballot.
A single list would send the most coherent message to voters, run the least risk of smaller parties falling short of the threshold, and emphasize opposition to Georgian Dream, said Tina Bokuchava, the chair of the ENM.
“Otherwise, it's [our own] party differences that become the divisions between us,” she told RFE/RL. “We're forced to define ourselves vis-à-vis each other, not just vis-à-vis the government.”
Out With The Old?
The ENM and its polarizing founder, jailed former President Mikheil Saakashvili, ruled Georgia from the 2003 Rose Revolution until suffering defeat by the upstart Georgian Dream in 2012.
It remains the single most popular opposition party in the low double-digits, but the widespread perception of the ENM is that it fell prey to autocratic excesses during that decade in power.
Georgian Dream has capitalized on popular distrust of ENM by labeling all opposition parties “the collective ENM.” So, many opposition leaders and sympathizers argue that distinguishing themselves from the ENM is essential to success at the ballot box.
“It has been working quite well for [Georgian Dream], using the ENM as a bogeyman to scare people from voting for the opposition,” Salome Samadashvili, a lawmaker for the liberal-centrist Lelo party, said. “There are plenty of Georgian voters who do not want to vote anymore for Georgian Dream, and they clearly see that it is time to change the government, but they're also very unwilling to vote for anything that includes the ENM.”
Lelo and some other parties have advocated for multiple smaller opposition alliances that are likely to surpass 5 percent but also offer a choice for voters who can’t abide ENM or some other specific opposition force.
That approach appeared to win out in June, when six opposition parties signed an agreement in Brussels pledging to announce their alliances by July 8. But the deadline passed with only one alliance announced, between ENM and Strategy Aghmeshenebeli, a smaller splinter party with which ENM had already formed an alliance last year.
The next day brought another alliance: the Akhali, Droa, and Girchi-More Freedom parties, all also led by former ENM officials.
The following week, a third alliance was announced between Lelo and the For The People and Freedom Square parties, neither of which has strong ties to ENM; on July 23, the Citizens Party joined as well.
The opposition strategy of coordinated variety doesn’t appear to have diverted Georgian Dream away from its “collective ENM” tactic. One of its lawmakers, Maka Botchorishvili, told RFE/RL recently that Georgia is “a very small society, and it is difficult to lie to people.”
“Whatever you create from the former ENM, it will still be ENM,” Botchorishvili said. “Maybe there will be little shifts, these changes, creating the picture that the old ENM doesn’t exist anymore -- this is their tactic -- but honestly I don’t think it will work.”
Cracks Already Emerging
Meanwhile, small but potentially important elements are missing from the efforts to unify.
The For Georgia party of Giorgi Gakharia, who was prime minister as a member of Georgian Dream from 2019 until a falling out with the party in 2021, has been in inconclusive talks so far on an alliance with Lelo.
“It could be quite a strong bloc, but their history and personal disagreements don’t allow it,” Kornely Kakachia, head of the Tbilisi think tank Georgian Institute of Politics, said of a For Georgia-Lelo pairing. “And there are many such stories like this.”
Polls suggest that For Georgia stands a good chance of reaching the 5 percent threshold on its own. Three other opposition parties that are less likely to do so -- European Georgia, Girchi, and the Labor Party -- have so far found no partners.
But Giga Bokeria, the chairman of European Georgia, said he likes the prospects of his party going it alone.
“If [Georgian Dream] are over 40 percent, then we are screwed, but they are losing ground,” Bokeria said. He said that with the opposition polling a combined 60 percent or so -- “assuming the ENM in the best-case scenario will have 20, maybe 25 [percent]” -- the remaining 35 percent can’t be divided among parties polling below 5 percent. “It’s not possible.”
Ahead of the vote, the Civil Society Foundation (the Georgian branch of the Open Society Foundation network) sponsored a poll intended to identify the most successful opposition configuration to challenge Georgian Dream.
RFE/RL obtained a copy of the results, which were meant for internal use among the opposition parties. It showed Georgian Dream with 29 percent support and a right-wing offshoot that will run together with it -- called People’s Power -- just below 1 percent.
The poll tested various opposition party groupings, though not those that eventually prevailed. It found that there was synergy among such alliances that could boost their results. The raw vote totals of the parties that joined the three alliances amounted to 32 percent -- just ahead of the ruling party bloc.
For Georgia, meanwhile, was just under the threshold at 4.6 percent; European Georgia was at 2.6 percent; and Labor at 1.2 percent. Losing those votes could make all the difference for the opposition, analyst Kakachia argued.
“I don’t think we have the luxury to lose 2 or 3 percent,” he said. “That can actually be decisive.”
Still, he said, the opposition has at least partially overcome the infighting that has long plagued it.
“This year, it seems like they have this pressure from Brussels and also from Georgian people to cooperate and at least not attack [each other],” he said. “But I'm not sure that they solved all their problems.”
