Presidential Elections in Georgia: Hours Away

The presidential elections in Georgia are literally a few hours away, polit-technologists and campaign strategists are putting in overtime billing, the networks keep additional slots ready for the breaking news, and the observers brace under the barrage of the new developments. And voters? What are they up to? It may seem that it’s business as usual in Georgia, the supporters of so-an-so “demonstrating” here, and their opponents – a couple of blocks away, at best. Media coverage makes it sound like there are at least two parallel realities in which the electoral process unfolds, one universe courtesy of Rustavi-2, and the other of all the rest of TV channels. Armchair pundits fight their Facebook battles, “marshrutka” drivers are asked to change the news station in the public transport to keep the peace, everyone is sick and tired of candidate posters, same old same old.

But this time around, there is an added intrigue to the elections actually being decided in the polls, with no party knowing the outcome well ahead of the voting. The generation that circled the only candidate from the Communist party and put the ballot into the box is still alive and well. They haven’t quite gotten used to the democratic elections, but then, neither has the rest of the polity. Tumultuous years after the Declaration of Independence, the Saakashvili takeover with no real opposition, election of the current president – none of these were exactly the exercises to make voters feel empowered. Even the Parliamentary elections in 2012 were not as important as the ones we’re about to witness on November 28, although, they provide an important context, and we’ll come back to that.

As is customary in Georgia, the presidential ballot was long and amusing, with the majority names barely anyone has heard of, outside of the candidates’ immediate family and friends. 25 hopefuls, single or in marriages of political convenience, presented themselves, splitting the vote and getting us to Round 2. But the main reason for “Indecision-2018” (borrowing the term coined by Jon Stewart) was the conspicuous absence of the ruling bloc candidate. Georgian Dream (GD) went through several months of deliberations, trying and failing to find a person they could nominate, sending mixed signals on whether they would support the independently running Zurabishvili, or rally against her. When finally, GD decided to back her up, the damage was done: in politics, you cannot just leave the open space and expect that no one will fill it in, especially when your opponents are from United National Movement (UNM). While the ruling group was whispering in couloirs, the average members of the Georgian Dream didn’t know which way the wind was blowing, and made some statements that needed to be retracted later; some talking heads were temporarily retired from the spotlight over that, too. Zurabishvili opponents were happy to sow discord, as the audition dragged on until after the deadline set by the Central Election Commission (CEC) for the nomination of the candidates. There was less than 50 days to undo the damage inflicted by all the opponents, but Zurabishvili fought this uphill battle valiantly, and got into the run-off, with the UNM candidate, Grigol Vashadze.

We’ll come back to these two in a moment, but the rest of the field merits attention as well. The 3rd place with almost 11% went to Bakradze from “European Georgia”, a spinoff from UNM – predictably, for Round 2, EG is throwing its support behind the former party. Even in a simple move like this, Georgia managed to deliver much-needed comic relief: a local branch of the “European Georgia” walked out in full, declaring that they never intended to work for the UNM. A month earlier, another local branch of the same party discovered that they were in EG, not in UNM for all those years after the split, undermining all the ideological differences proclaimed by the EG leadership. Not that anyone actually believed that it was done for anything but optics – anyone outside the local branches, obviously. The fourth place in the October 28 elections went to Natelashvili, Our Perpetual Groom of Labor, who has made a decent career as an opposition politician, while managing to remain a super-convenient figure: never a real threat (a well-calculated position), yet vocal enough to whip a crowd into a meeting, with enough regional presence to tick off the “political pluralism” checkbox on questionnaires of foreign observers and analysts. Shrewd enough to understand that he lacks ammunition to counter the big boys battling for the top portfolios, he is content with a couple of seats in the legislative body if Labor gets them, or, maybe something in the executive branch on a regional or local level. Places 5-6 were separated by literally 3 votes: Usupashvili, running with Alasania-less Free Democrats, and the founder of “Girchi”, Japaridze. The former has guided the GD-majority Parliament through tumultuous times of co-habitation and tensions running high, defusing many a conflict and doing a much better job than his successor, but fell out of favor when his then-Republicans lost a bargaining war with the other parties in Georgian Dream. Out of the GD bloc, Usupashvili failed to get even a single seat in the 2016 Parliament, and subsequently left the Republicans – for a good reason, it seems: after opposing UNM long before it was mainstream (or safe), the current leadership of the Republican party threw its support behind the ex-archenemy, presumably for a promise of a couple of ministerial posts. Japaridze, on the other hand, has been across the aisle in the Parliament elected in 2012, but left UNM in 2015, and has created quite a stir with his “pinecone” (“Girchi”, translated), with his inflatable churches for the would-be draft-dodgers, and cannabis-centered talking points. He did endorse the UNM candidate in the runoff, but retracted quickly – this may be quite important on November 28, as Japaridze’s voters in Tbilisi have outnumbered those of the European Georgia’s, in some districts – not bad for a 3-year old spinoff with limited resources. Usupashvili, in turn, has penned an article emphasizing the importance of not giving the UNM free talking points in order to defeat their candidate, and suggesting that the President-elect should take the conciliatory stance to re-unite the society split by the campaign rhetoric.

For the runoff candidates, Zurabishvili and Vashadze, who got under 35% each in the first round, every vote counts. With the alliances outlined above, and with many still undecided voters, the information and media coverage are the real battlefields. UNM is far more experienced in that area, and it showed: with the ex-president Saakashvili working overtime, taking up as much airspace as humanly possible, GD was put on the defensive, and lagged behind in providing an adequate response. However, the “Dreamers” managed to stand their ground on the key “bombshell revelation” thrown at them by the National Movement: the alleged printing of the fake IDs by the State Services Development Agency (SSDA), to falsify/embellish votes. In that battle, there was a heavy collateral damage, as three strong NGOs backed the hysteria spewed by the UNM propaganda arm, Rustavi-2: the accusations fizzled out, as UNM admitted to having no proof whatsoever. The “Transparency International” and GYLA went into the fearmongering stint without checking the information first, and have suffered reputational loss as impartial and fair entities. Not a good day for the NGOs who are viewed by many naysayers as grant-gobbling organizations engaged in political discourse. But, this allegation brought to light an interesting question: what are the defense mechanisms and control procedures at the SSDA – incidentally, a highlighted item on a CV of Vashadze Jr (of the same UNM, but unrelated to the candidate)? Is there an audit trail to be examined by an independent body, preferably going back several years to its inception? The spikes in printing national IDs might prove to be very telling.

Another big item against Zurabishvili – and you’ll see the pattern of being on the defensive here, as GD has a huge mismatch in PR teams: with Russian spin-doctor professionals on the UNM side, Georgian Dream managed to hire an ex-Rustavi2 person (!) to manage the final stretch of Zurabishvili’s bid for Presidency (lame is the mildest word that comes to mind) – is the campaign finance. Georgian Dream is notoriously bad at optics, unable to present its strongest achievements in a format that people will actually understand and appreciate, and the PM announcing the payoff of bad debts under a certain amount, for a large chunk of the Georgian population, was no exception. Yes, many Georgians are in debt, and, unable to pay it off, are blacklisted by the financial institutions. And while ridding them of the said debt is an honorable idea, the way it’s being presented is simply wrong, if not formally illegal. Buying bad debt portfolios (usually, pennies on a dollar) is a customary financial transaction done by the collection agencies, even if in this case the buyer is an entity known to all Georgians for its charitable work. It is then up to the buyer to decide whether to pursue the collection, in full, partially, or not at all – but the PM of Georgia has absolutely no business announcing that, especially in light of the buying entity being owned by the ruling party chairman who has a candidate in the run-off in the presidential elections! Plus, there’s a risk of alienating many who have been paying their debts diligently, despite the hardships, and those who believe that the money spent on bad debtors would go a long way if invested in the economy instead.

And still, despite those blunders, Salome Zurabishvili seems to be poised to become the first female President of Georgia – simply because her opponent is Grigol Vashadze, widely seen as Putin’s stooge, with his KGB past and well-known allegiances. This election is not UNM vs GD – and the current escalation in the Azov Sea is just a reminder that Russia is casting its shadow ever so ominously over its neighbors. The question on November 28 will be: does Georgia want a president who was a citizen of Russia at the time of the 2008 war (until late 2009, to be precise)? Whose allegiance was not to the country he was serving as a Minister of Foreign Affairs, but to the one occupying 20% of Georgia’s territory? Whom does Georgia want as Commander-in-Chief? Russia’s choice is clear, they support Vashadze. Georgia’s choice is open, and it’s up to the voters at the polls.

By Kyra Devdariani