Georgia, a strategically important Caucasus country, will hold a parliamentary election on Saturday that could determine the country’s geopolitical orientation for years to come as it is pulled between Russia, China and the West.

The governing Georgian Dream party is looking for a broad mandate to assert its conservative course, one that has already steered the country away from the West and closer to Russia and China.

Georgia’s splintered opposition has been trying to challenge Georgian Dream’s ambitions by calling on voters to unite and break the party’s 12-year rule and push the country toward memberships in the European Union and NATO.

It is hard to predict which political force is likely to win. The governing party and the opposition both claim to be ahead, citing partisan polls predicting widely divergent results.

Either way, the result will most likely reverberate both in the Caucasus and beyond.

“It is a turning point for Georgia,” said Dimitri Moniava, the head of the Strategic Communications Center, a research group in Tbilisi. “The ruling party has put everything at stake.”

What is at stake?

Both the governing party and the opposition portray the election as an existential choice for Georgia, which has been among the most pro-Western states to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet Union.