TBILISI, GEORGIA — An uneasy calm has descended on the streets of Tbilisi ahead of a crucial election on October 26, widely seen as a referendum on Georgia’s future.
Beneath the surface, there is palpable tension.
Campaign billboards, most for the ruling Georgian Dream Party, vie for voters’ attention with countless European Union, NATO and Ukrainian flags hanging from windows and graffitied on the city’s red brick buildings alongside anti-Russian slogans.
Six months ago, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Tbilisi to protest the reintroduction of a so-called “foreign agent” law, which compels any organization receiving more than 20% of its funding from overseas to register with the government and submit to detailed financial investigation.
A brutal crackdown on the demonstrations prompted Western powers to impose sanctions on some Georgian officials.
Critics say the law mimics Russian legislation used to silence political opponents and independent media. The Georgian government insists the law is necessary to show who is funding political organizations.
Defiance
The foreign agent law came into force in September. However, most foreign-funded civil society groups have refused to comply. Dozens of the organizations are now working together to act as election monitors amid fears that Georgian Dream may not easily give up power, even if they lose the election.
Among the chief targets of the foreign agent law is Eka Gigauri, head of the anti-corruption group Transparency International. Alongside other prominent civil society leaders, she appears on government propaganda posters, accused of selling out Georgia and getting rich on foreign money. Their faces are marked with red crosses.
“This is a matter of dignity,” Gigauri told VOA. “We are not spies. We are not undermining the interests of the country. We are the patriots of this country, and we served this country and the people of this country for many years.”
Transparency International has refused to register as a foreign agent, risking prosecution and heavy fines for the organization and its staff.
“We are using all the legal tools, everything, to fight, to resist, not to comply, to inform the citizens about the wrongdoings of the government,” she said. “Still, we see that at any time, the government can enforce this law.
“And now especially, when there is this preelection period and the majority of the NGOs are involved in observing the elections, definitely it will be [an] additional obstacle for us if it happens. However, it did not happen yet.”
Transparency International said most foreign-funded civil society organizations have refused to comply with the new law, with only 41 organizations having so far registered as foreign agents.
Free media
Tabula Media, an independent multimedia organization, is one of several groups seeking to circumvent the legislation.
“We had to reestablish the organization in an EU country — Estonia — which deeply complicates financial operations,” Tabula editor-in-chief Levan Sutidze told VOA.
“We are familiar with this path and where it leads. It leads to Russia, to the complete silencing of critical voices, to the annihilation of independent media outlets and NGOs, and it will have catastrophic consequences in the future,” Sutidze said. “Even if the situation worsens, we will not submit to this insult.”
The investigative organization Realpolitika has also registered its headquarters in Tallinn, Estonia, in a bid to avoid prosecution under the foreign agent law.
“For now, this law does not apply to us. However, this could change after the election,” said editor-in-chief Aka Zarqua.
“Pressure from the international community and the backlash within Georgian society have both contributed to the government not fully enforcing this legislation before the election, and we can see their partial retreat,” Zarqua said. “It’s clear that October 26 will be decisive in this regard.”
Backlash
For some civil society groups, navigating the foreign agent law has been a traumatic process.
The pro-democracy organization Shame was founded in 2019 after the ruling Georgian Dream Party allowed a visiting Russian prime minister to address lawmakers from the speaker’s chair in the Georgian parliament, prompting widespread outrage.
In August, the organization decided to comply with the foreign agent law and register with the government “because we believed there was no other way to save the organization and continue its work if Georgian Dream somehow managed to win the election and the law remained enforced,” according to Dachi Imedadze, Shame’s head of strategy.
The organization, however, reversed its decision after a bitter public backlash.
“It escalated into conspiracy theories and personal attacks, with people calling us traitors,” Imedadze said.
Shame is now campaigning to get young people to vote.
“One-third of young people, aged 18 to 25, do not participate in elections. This represents approximately 250,000 potential voters,” Imedadze told VOA. “Our main target audience is this group, many of whom will be voting for the first time in this election.”
‘Russian swamp’
Nino Lomjaria, a former public defender of Georgia, now heads Georgia’s European Orbit, a civil society group partly funded by the U.S.-based Soros Foundation.
Lomjaria and her team have traveled across the country urging people to turn out and vote. Their election leaflets mimic the election ballot but offer only two choices.
“It says: ‘Are you choosing European well-being or the Russian swamp?’” she said.
Georgian Dream insists it is not pro-Russian and wants to join the EU. Party leaders say they are seeking to improve relations with Moscow to avoid further conflict, accusing critics and rivals of being part of a “global war party” that is seeking to profit from war with Russia.
Lomjaria scoffs at that accusation.
“We know who starts wars. We know that the ‘global war party’ is Russia. It’s not the West. And for us, the European Union is the safe place. That’s why we want to join this community, because we consider that being the member of the European Union, being the member of NATO, this is something where we will find peace and stability,” she told VOA.
Election monitors
Georgia’s European Orbit has joined a coalition of nongovernmental organizations that are planning to monitor the election, “which is composed of up to 30 organizations,” Lomjaria said.
“And our plan is to be present at every polling station to observe the whole process of voting and vote tabulation. We will have evidence of how elections have been conducted in this country, and we will litigate if we find out that there was some manipulation or electoral fraud,” she said.
Gigauri of Transparency International doubts Georgia’s judicial system is robust enough to cope with such a crisis.
“The state institutions in Georgia are captured. This is a very unfortunate fact and the reality. Definitely it’s very difficult for everyone to operate. But we also see that more and more, it is very difficult for those institutions to deal with the resistance from the people,” Gigauri told VOA.
The government insists it will respect the election result.
“Georgian Dream is based on democratic principles, and therefore it will respect every decision made by the Georgian people. We will accept the people’s decision, whatever it may be,” Nikoloz Samkharadze, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA in an interview.
“At the same time, I want to emphasize that we are confident the vast majority of Georgians will support Georgian Dream.”
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