In August, the leaders of Georgia’s ruling party gathered in the ancient capital of Mtskheta to outline their plans for if they win the country’s parliamentary elections on Oct. 26. Speaking at a campaign rally near an Orthodox Christian church, the Georgian Dream party’s honorary chairman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, committed to a measure to ban opposition parties.
“The Oct. 26 elections must turn into Nuremberg trials for the UNM,” Ivanishvili said, referring to the United National Movement, Georgia’s largest opposition party, which left power in 2012 and remains deeply divisive. The moment encapsulated Georgian Dream’s strategy since passing a controversial law in May to regulate so-called “foreign influence” in the country: targeting all perceived threats.
Widespread protests against the Law on Transparency in Foreign Influence—which entered force in August and requires organizations receiving funding from abroad to register as foreign agents—fizzled out months ago. But opposition to Georgian Dream has not disappeared; it has simply changed shape amid increased repression. Nongovernmental organizations refuse to comply with the draconian requirements of the law, and Georgia’s opposition parties have formed unprecedented alliances in an effort to bring a new government to power.
All sides now view the elections this week as a referendum on the country’s future. Georgian Dream portrays itself it is a bulwark against conflict amid Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, while opposition parties see their victory as the only way to preserve Georgia’s democracy and hopes for membership in the European Union.
Vladimer Mkervalishvili arrived at his office building one day in May to find its outer walls covered with spray paint. The director of Rights Georgia, a prominent human rights organization, Mkervalishvili has not experienced many threats during his career, making the words scrawled outside—calling his employees “traitors,” “fascists,” and “enemies of the country”—unsettling.
Such incidents were common in the spring as the Georgian Parliament debated the foreign influence law and Tbilisi’s streets swelled every evening with protesters carrying EU flags and shouting anti-government slogans. Some opposition activists and political figures even came under attack, targeted with death threats and even physical violence.
The foreign influence law drew large-scale opposition because—compared to similar legislation in some Western countries, including the United States—Georgia’s is more far-reaching, imposing monitoring on nearly all organizations that receive foreign funding. Neighboring Russia has employed its own foreign agents law to give the government wide-ranging powers to muzzle dissent.
After the Georgian law passed, the EU halted Tbilisi’s bid for membership, and the United States began to review its relations with the country, fearing that the law’s passage marked a shift away from the West. Officials in Washington implied that the United States wouldn’t support a government responsible for democratic backsliding. Ties have deteriorated further since, with the EU ambassador in Tbilisi recently announcing the suspension of all high-level meetings with Georgian government officials.
The foreign influence law appears to be just one part of creeping anti-liberalism in the country. A few weeks after Georgian Dream’s announcement of a probable ban on opposition parties, the government gave final approval to a slew of anti-LGBTQ measures, including a ban on same-sex marriage. Though likely an attempt to appeal to traditionalist voters, such moves only add fuel to the argument that the party’s aim is not actually to achieve European integration, but rather to retain power at all costs.
Rights Georgia is the kind of organization that faces a total shutdown as the foreign agents law is implemented. Because of the adversarial nature of the group’s work, which has recently included offering legal assistance to people arrested during this year’s protests, Mkervalishvili assumes that it is among the law’s top targets. Refusing to comply, Rights Georgia prepared to pay mandatory fines earlier this year—a tactic that many NGOs are employing—and hopes that the elections will produce a Parliament ready to revoke the law.
“Fighting against this law—it was not political for us; it was a human rights issue,” Mkervalishvili said.
The organization is involved with a constitutional challenge against the law that is working its way through the courts, but Mkervalishvili admitted that the future is uncertain. He said the fact that September passed without a promised ramp-up in enforcement of the law made him think that officials either don’t have the capacity to fully implement the law or are waiting to do so until after the elections.
“We don’t know what their plans are,” he said, adding that potential repercussions depend “on what their main goal is in this situation, and who are the main targets.”
That fear is shared by many people in the political opposition, who are increasingly casting the outcome of the elections as vital for the fate of Georgia’s democracy.
“These are the last days—literally—of a free Georgia unless we all do everything to make sure that Georgian Dream is replaced through democratic elections,” said Grigol Gegelia, the foreign secretary for the opposition party Lelo.
Georgian Dream identified Lelo’s electoral coalition, alongside a handful of others, as a group to be banned if it wins the upcoming elections. By the ruling party’s logic, all these parties are offshoots of UNM and therefore carry its controversial legacy of political scandal, brutal crackdowns on protests, and creeping authoritarianism during its time in power. Gegelia refuted these claims by using Lelo as an example; he said that the party does not include any former UNM members.
“This election is about Georgia’s statehood. Full stop,” he added.
Other observers describe the elections as a choice between progress and stagnation—economically as well as politically.
“This particular election will be crucial, not only for the future of democracy in Georgia, but also for what kind of Georgia that Georgians want to see,” said Kornely Kakachia, the director of the Georgian Institute of Politics, an independent think tank in Tbilisi.
A major motivation for Georgia’s ongoing effort toward joining the EU, for example, is the perceived economic benefit of full membership. But banning opposition parties and other similar moves are only likely to cement Georgia’s frayed relations with the bloc, which has emphasized that the door remains open to membership talks if the government in Tbilisi walks back anti-democratic initiatives.
As organizations grappled with the surprisingly restrained implementation of the foreign influence law over the past few months, campaigning was getting into full swing. Opposition politicians crisscrossed the country, promising to address pressing issues such as net emigration and economic stagnation—but only after reversing Georgian Dream’s course.
The high stakes of the elections have supercharged Georgia’s already-contentious political environment. Around the time that the foreign influence law passed, there were widespread calls to overcome the divides that have long plagued Georgia’s opposition. In June, President Salome Zourabichvili—an independent politician who holds a largely ceremonial role—announced a plan of action called the Georgian Charter, which would guide an opposition-led government.
For a short time, it seemed that Georgia’s opposition would finally unite as one, but it proved hard to overcome old differences. Opposition parties that initially expressed interest in a broad alliance split into blocs once discussions got underway. Now, a handful of opposition alliances are vying for seats in Parliament: Unity—National Movement, led by UNM; the Coalition for Change, comprising former UNM members and small parties with little prior representation; and Strong Georgia, of which Lelo is a member.
“Unity is very important, but for me, unity doesn’t mean one list,” said Giorgi Gakharia, a former Georgian Dream prime minister who left the party in 2021 and now leads the For Georgia party. His party is running an independent campaign, something that he said will allow it to pull voters away from Georgian Dream.
But that strategy—which Gakharia called a “golden key” to success—could end up benefiting the ruling party, which could use the opposition’s split support—as well as the potential for smaller parties to miss the 5 percent parliamentary threshold—to its advantage.
One recent poll, commissioned by a government-aligned TV station, estimated Georgian Dream’s support at nearly 60 percent of the vote, while another, commissioned by an opposition-aligned station, suggested that the party’s support is closer to 32 percent. Party leaders seem unfazed by this discrepancy, even as they mirror the opposition’s dire rhetoric about the vote.
The opposition’s victory will depend on whether it can pull substantial votes away from Georgian Dream, according to Kakachia, of the Georgian Institute of Politics.
“It would be better if the Georgian opposition were united … but it’s still fine if they have three or four different groups,” he said. “The main thing is what they will offer to Georgian voters in order to convince them they are not just able to challenge Georgian Dream, but they can also work together.”
No matter who ends up at the head of the opposition pack, it’s likely that any Parliament not dominated by Georgian Dream will quickly try to undo the ruling party’s work. The opposition’s primary campaign goal is to restore Georgia’s so-called Euro-Atlantic trajectory by rolling back repressive policies. To that end, repealing the foreign influence law is the Georgian Charter’s first action item.
And if Georgian Dream wins? Maka Botchorishvili, a member of Parliament for the ruling party, told Foreign Policy that their plans are to pursue “stability”—a common phrase among party officials—and to develop Georgia’s role as an economic linchpin between East and West. She acknowledged that there are “difficulties” in relations with the EU but brushed off the idea that Georgia’s membership accession is on ice, seeming to imply that Tbilisi can wait Brussels out.
“I would not look at EU enlargement or Georgia’s accession process in a very limited time frame, because that is a big issue,” Botchorishvili said. “It is not ending tomorrow, right?”
Perhaps most striking about the lead-up to this year’s elections is how little Georgian Dream’s messaging has changed, even in the face of immense public dissatisfaction. It still advertises itself as the party for those who dream of EU membership. Its campaign banners across Tbilisi display the party logo mixed with the European flag and words that it hopes will appeal to those voters: “To Europe only with peace, dignity, prosperity.”