![Election Rigging of the Parliamentary Elections in Georgia with Alexander Zibzibadze [PODCAST]](https://4liberty.eu/phidroav/2024/12/Alexander-Zibzibadze-1469x800-1-1024x561.png "Election Rigging of the Parliamentary Elections in Georgia with Alexander Zibzibadze [PODCAST]")
What is the outcome of the parliamentary elections in Georgia? What should we know about the authoritarian evolution of the Georgian Dream ruling party? What was the role of the Russian war in Ukraine on the politics in Georgia? What is the way forward? And what should the European Union do about these recent developments?
Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Alexander Zibzibadze, Chairman and Founder of the youth educational organization Georgia’s Future Academy (GFA). His leadership of the GFA, the renowned youth network Franklin Club and wider civil society has been instrumental in organizing two large-scale protest waves against the so-called “Russian foreign agents law” in March 2023 and April-June 2024. After the protests, he was one of the initiators to establish the “My Vote for the EU” coalition, the largest election observation mission for the 2024 Georgian Parliamentary Elections uniting more than 20 leading NGOs. After the protests, Alexander has also emerged as a prominent civil society leader and a national and international media commentator.
LJ: The October elections in Georgia effectively resulted in the victory of the party that has already been in power for over a decade, the Georgian Dream (GD). As a consequence, the opposition parties accused the ruling party of stealing the election and it seems that the observers share this view. These were not minor incidents, but rather major action on behalf of the Georgian Dream aimed at altering the result of the election. Does this mean that the current government is illegitimate?
Alexander Zibzibadze (AZ): Usually, when talking about electoral manipulation and election rigging, especially in terms of Georgia, we split these actions into two parts. The first part regards all the manipulations which happened before the electoral day. The second one happens on the electoral day.
When it comes to the ones before the election day, the usual strategy is based on using administrative resources to mobilize voters. For example, the government may require all civil servants and their families to vote for the government. Moreover, when those people vote, they have to take a photo with their phones of the ballot and later may need to show it as a proof. Otherwise, they may lose their jobs in the future. There already are a few confirmed cases of people who were fired after the elections because they could not provide the proof (because they voted for the opposition).
The same is being done with regard to the people who are dependent on the government because of different social services. Those people are also required to bring the proofs of voting for the government. This is one of the strategies.
Sometimes governments may use weird or crazy schemes to achieve the desired result. For example, when it comes to the families who have relatives in jail, if they mobilize enough voters for the ruling party, their family members are being pardoned. This was the case of one of my colleagues whose family member is in jail – his family was asked to collect 200 votes and if they managed to do so, their relative would be released three years before the end of his sentence. These types of manipulations do happen.
This year, a new scheme was also invented by the GD party – confiscating people’s IDs in advance. As a result, the people who were known to be leaning toward voting for the opposition were approached by the security services, who confiscated their IDs – and without you ID, you cannot vote in Georgia.
Apart from that, we could also observe a number of different scare tactics, manipulation, and sometimes even vote buying. All this usually happens before the election day. In Georgia, we are used to it. It is our normal.
The second part happens on the electoral day itself, which this year was on October 26. What we saw on the election day revealed an unprecedented scale of manipulations and rigging that we have never seen in Georgia before – or at least since 2003, when the Rose Revolution took place.
We observed tens of cases when the same people were voting in different polling stations, people voting without IDs, or people were voting instead of other people. Most likely, those were probably the IDs which are confiscated from opposition voters or individuals who were randomly voting for other people.
However, an even more important and evident violation that was happening on the electoral day was related to the secrecy of vote. The new electoral system that was introduced in Georgia involves digital counting machines, which we did not use before. The ballot was constructed in such a way that opposition parties were at the top of the ballot, while the GD candidates were at the bottom. As a result, when voting, you would have to color with the marker the circle of the party which you wanted to vote for, which made it possible for everyone in the polling station to see who you had voted for based on the composition of the ballot – and whether you voted for the government or not.
The secrecy of the vote is one of the major electoral principles, so this is a very big issue. It was especially visible in the rural area and small towns in Georgia, where people are very concerned about the secrecy of their vote – which was, basically violated for 90% of Georgian citizens. As a result, many people were simply scared and, as a consequence, voted for the government because they thought that their vote would not be secret.
Moreover, we also observed the so-called ‘carousel voting’, when people go from one polling station to another voting multiple times or voting instead of other people. There were even some cases of ballot stuffing – one of our observers recorded a video of somebody in Marneuli (a district with ethnic Azeri minorities) was stuffing the ballot box with tens of ballots.
The extent of these kinds of voting manipulations is unprecedented for Georgia because until now, most of the vote ringing and manipulations were happening before the election day. This time, according to statistical analyses conducted on the polling stations on the election day, when we compare it to previous years, there are some crazy irregularities. For example, in one of the districts, in the last election, the government party received 47% of all votes, but this time they reportedly received 72%. Basically, all of the organizations (Georgian NGOs and opposition parties, as well as the OSCE, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, among other international organizations) which looked at the polling numbers clearly said that such election results could not be achieved if the voting was conducted freely and fairly.
LJ: Given that it seems that the electoral fraud is evident, why have the OSCE or other organizations not clearly labelled it as such?
AZ: One thing which the Georgian Dream government is good at is that they do not operate like most of the authoritarian regimes. They do not claim to have received 70% or 80% of the votes in favor the ruling party. Meanwhile, in Belarus, Lukashenko would always say that he got 80% or 90% of votes. In Russia, Putin would always get more than 70%, because this is the number he feels is important to show to prove his legitimacy. In Georgian Dream’s case, 53% was the official result which was announced in the end.
The second thing is the relationship between the Georgian state and the Western institutions. Basically, everyone stopped short of calling the election rigged, but at the same time, nobody called it free and fair. The European Union and the United States demand an investigation to be conducted by non-partisan international actors. However, the Georgian Dream does not want to comply.
Meanwhile, when the OSCE made its first statement the day after the elections, on October 27, a lot of evidence was still being collected. We spent the last months compiling all the evidence and sending it to all our partners, which was a very important process because it took a lot of time to process all the videos, photos, protocols, and all observations. In many cases, we had to take the matter to court.
LJ: What is going to happen next? Is there a scenario in which those elections might be repeated or considered invalid? Or will the Georgian Dream stay in power?
AZ: Three of the four opposition coalition parties have already withdrawn their list. Another one has just submitted it. Georgia is now entering the period of a long-term political crisis. For the first time in the Georgian history, we are going to have a one-party parliament. Since gaining our independence, we have always had at least two or three political parties in the parliament. Now, the GD is alone in the parliament.
As the Georgian Dream party is trying to consolidate their power, they are moving really fast. They have already nominated the new cabinet, with the programs of four out of 13 ministries have been discussed by the parliament in less than a day. The ruling party also announced that they will hold the new presidential elections on December 14, which means that the new president will be elected by the end of the year as well.
At the moment, the election results are being contested. The president and CSOs appealed to the Constitutional Court, as the Georgian constitution clearly states that the parliament should not assemble if more than one-third of MPs’ legitimacy is being questioned in the courts. At the moment, all 150 MPs are being questioned, but the GD still proceeded with the first parliament session in an attempt to consolidate their power by the end of the year.
If the opposition does not manage to enter the parliament, it will result in a one-party parliament. At that point, the opposition will probably try to make sure that an international investigation is conducted. In case the international investigation comes to the same conclusion as Georgian NGOs – that the elections were rigged and do not represent the will of Georgian people – it would put pressure on the Georgian Dream to hold snap elections. This is likely the goal.
However, it is also very important that the snap elections are conducted by a reformed Central Election Commission. At the moment in Georgia, only the ruling party appoints the people who conduct the elections, which makes it a very partisan process. Moreover, because of all the election rigging and irregularities in the process this year, there is no public trust in the electoral commission. Therefore, obviously, it needs some kind of a reform, but it is still difficult to say what kind of reform there should be or who should conduct those elections. Nonetheless, before holding a new one, if we want it to be free and fair, we definitely need to change the people who conduct the elections.
Meanwhile, the protests are not as large in scale as they were during the spring, when we were protesting against the so-called Russian foreign agent law. It is understandable because a lot of people are now frustrated. We were protesting for two months in spring, on a daily basis, nonstop. Back then a lot of people hoped that the election would be the process which would result in change.
Now, because the protests did not bring any change in the spring and since the elections were rigged, usually people need some time to process the reality and understand the situation better. Nevertheless, the protests are still going on, which is very important because it puts the pressure on the Georgian Dream party.
LJ: How has the Russian war in Ukraine changed the context of the elections in Georgia? And what is the Georgian Dream’s attitude toward democracy?
AZ: At the moment, even Armenia is more democratic than Georgia, which is strange. Back in 2015-2017, when we were attending different conferences and meetings in Brussels and in D.C., we were always asking our European colleagues (especially when they were discussing the Eastern Partnership) if it was possible to have Georgia discussed separately without Ukraine and Moldova. The reason for that was that, as Georgians, we have always felt that Ukraine and Moldova were kind of the brakes on our European integration.
Georgia had been doing a lot of institutional reforms and was further ahead than those two countries, especially in terms of dealing with corruption, among other issues. However, now, the situation has changed completely – and the Russian war in Ukraine had a lot to do with it.
The foreign policy of the Georgian Dream has been based on an attempt to trying to sit on two chairs at the same time – one chair being Western or European integration and the second one being Russia. However, after the war in Ukraine started, while the EU and Western world in general tried to distance themselves from Russia as much as possible, it became impossible for the Georgian Dream party to continue to sit on these two chairs simultaneously, because they would eventually fall onto the ground.
Georgia has never joined any sanctions against Russia. We had a lot of opportunities during the war to finally get the defensive weapons Georgia really needed to protect itself from a potential Russian aggression, which before the war in Ukraine had not been provided by our Western partners. After the Russian invasion on Ukraine, the United States and Europe became more keen to discuss providing Georgia with different types of defensive weapons. However, the Georgian Dream did not want to make Russia angry, and so they refused to get any defensive weapons as a result.
There is also extensive evidence to show that Georgia has been used to help Russians to go through the sanctions imposed on them. For example, the export of cars from Georgia into Russia had increased significantly and stopped only after Europe and the United States intervened. However, now we export all these cars to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and, from where all the parts that are sanctioned by the Western countries are going into Russia anyway.
The war in Ukraine has played an important role in the strategy of the Georgian Dream. As a result, the party started to get more and more authoritarian, as they tried to destroy the so-called ‘freedom islands’ in Georgia. They went on a crusade against the media that had been critical of them and improved the censorship mechanism. They also passed the Russian Foreign Agent Law (which resembled the law passed in 2012 in Russia), which will start fully operating since January 1, and which will make it almost impossible for most of Georgian CSOs to operate in the country.
Moreover, the Georgian Dream has already announced that they are planning to submit the appeal to the Constitutional Court to ban all opposition parties in Georgia, which looks like a very authoritarian move. We are already considering Georgia to be an electoral autocracy, which is very alarming for many of us because there are no independent institutions left in the country (with the sole exception of the president).
LJ: What should be the future strategy of the European Union in regard to Georgia? What will the forthcoming presidential elections bring?
AZ: Regarding the presidential elections, for the first time in the history of Georgia, the Georgian Dream party changed the Constitution and now the president is not being elected by the people anymore. For the first time, the electoral college – which consists of the parliament and local councilors – will elect the president. Moreover, the GD party has a significant majority in the parliament, which means that they would be able to elect whoever they want.
Regarding the opposition strategy, what opposition should do is, first of all, not give the legitimacy to this parliament. At the moment, it seems that none of the opposition party will be taking their mandates. Secondly, pressure should be constantly put on the government. As such, the current political crisis requires working with our Western partners, but also, and even more importantly, organizing protests in Georgia. As a consequence, the government should be constantly feeling the pressure from the opposition and the civil society through massive protests. The goal is for the government to agree to hold snap elections.
Regarding our Western partners, it appears that the prospect of Georgia’s further European and NATO integration is closed for now. Currently, many discussions about suspending also Georgia’s candidacy status or potentially being a member of the Schengen area. However, punishing ordinary Georgians is not the best way to go forward.
What the West should collectively do is to, first, think about how they view Georgia and if Georgia can be a strategic partner for Europe based on values. The best way to move forward is to continue with the targeted sanctions regime – which the United States has already introduced against some of Georgian officials, including some of the Georgian judges, as well as the head and the deputy head of the police, and numerous MPs. The European Union should also join Americans in this effort because it looks like the people who rigged the elections in Georgia are still enjoying all their freedoms, and their families are still freely traveling to Europe, doing shopping, and enjoying all the perks and benefits of the Western civilization. At the same time, they keep telling Georgians how the West is bad, how it is trying to drag Georgia into the war with Russia, and spew other kinds of unfounded propaganda.
It has become clear that further integration is not possible if the election rigging, and authoritarian-style laws are not addressed properly. The European Union and the United States have to be very clear about this in their statements, so that they do not leave any room for interpretation by our government, as it will try to interpret it in their favor.
The West should also examine the development aid given to Georgia and refocus it to strengthen the civil society, pro-democratic and pro-European activist groups, and to no longer support the Georgian Dream regime, which often uses those funds to crack down on democratic activists (for example, the Georgian security forces were trained by means of using the funds allocated by the USAID).
Finally, both the United States and the EU should be clear and definite in regard to the imposed sanctions and in what they expect of the Georgian government. The messaging surrounding this issue should clearly focus on withdrawing support for a non-democratic regime and increase the support of pro-democratic groups. Such an approach should, hopefully, at some point lead to snap elections.
This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.
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