GEORGIA: The Pro-European Rally & more – 24th Oct 2024

Gamarjobat from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Georgia Update from the 24th of October twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Georgia.

On Sunday, the 20th, the last big pro-European rally before the parliamentary elections took place in the streets of Tbilisi. NGOs organized the event, titled Georgia Chooses the European Union, and did not feature opposition political parties, although many politicians attended as private citizens.

It’s hard to tell exactly how many people attended the event. State media tends to downplay the headcount significantly. This time they also accused the opposition media of using clips from old demonstrations in their coverage. The opposition says that attendance figures ranged from 90,000 to 100,000. However, from the drone images shared on social media, it looks like the number might have been between 50.000 and 70.000.

President Salome Zurabishvili attended the rally. In her speech, she said that pro-European forces would win the elections.

The most viewed piece of media about the pro-European rally was a video shared by one of the participants. During the President’s speech, a group of people from the top of a nearby building aimed laser pointers into her eyes, trying to distract her. Several attendees pinpointed their location and went to the building. They found a group of young people there, who were later identified as being associated with the Georgian Dream or Otsneba’s youth organization. They seemed rather dumbfounded by being discovered and used blankets to hide their heads and faces from cameras. The video went viral on the same day and garnered over two and a half million views on Facebook.

In other news, the state media channel Imedi shared a pre-recorded interview with Bidzina Ivanishvili. The interview, which lasted over an hour, featured the oligarch discussing the importance of the upcoming parliamentary elections, among other topics. One of them was his former teammate Gogi Gakharia. Recall that Gogi left Otsneba and formed his own party, taking with him over a dozen of MPs. Ivanishvili called him a bastard and threatened both Gakharia and his teammates with prison. He also reiterated his party’s message that Otsneba needs to gain a constitutional majority during the upcoming elections to ban the existence of the United National Movement, or Natsebi, along with all the parties under their umbrella.

Ivanishvili said that economically, Georgia is doing incredibly well. However, even though the GDP increased almost 10% year-on-year in the second quarter of twenty twenty-four, up from an 8% increase in the previous three-month period, Georgians have been struggling with rising prices for the last two years.

In terms of foreign relations, he mentioned that he already has an appointment to meet the U.S. ambassador after the election to start improving relationships with the West. For over ten minutes, he talked about his personal finances and discussed his court case against the Swiss bank Credit Suisse, which owes him around two billion dollars. Ivanishvili frequently points to this court case as an attempt by Western powers to hold his money hostage in order to influence him.

On Wednesday, the 23rd, Otsneba organized its own political rally in Tbilisi. A significant number of attendees were from outside the city. Otsneba organized transportation from various regions to Tbilisi. Bera Ivanishvili, the son of Bidzina Ivanishvili, who resides in Brazil and is a famous musician, performed during the event's closing.

On the same day, supporters of Otsneba, coming from their party’s rally, attacked Levan Gogichaishvili, a member of the opposition party Gakharia For Georgia or Sakartvelostvis, in a subway station. Gogichaishvili did not suffer serious injuries.

On a related note, on Wednesday, the 23rd, the online magazine Tabula shared a recording of a phone call in which the director of Rustavi’s public kindergarten threatened teachers with a hostile work environment if they refused to attend Otsneba’s rally. Reports have long suggested that teachers in the public sector, especially in kindergartens, experience constant pressure and face job losses if they do not comply with party directives, such as attending demonstrations or promoting party causes.

Going back to the parliamentary elections, they will take place this Saturday, the 26th. According to the Election Administration of Georgia, the total number of voters is just over 3.5 million. Out of that number, just over 3.1 million (ninety percent) will vote electronically. This will be the first election for 135.000 people, as they are over eighteen now. In total, a little over three thousand voting stations will open. Almost one hundred thousand Georgians will be able to vote from outside the country. For them, sixty-seven polling stations will open in fifty-three cities across forty-two countries.

Major opposition parties that will compete with Otsneba will be Natsebi, electoral number 5; the Coalition for Change - Gvaramia, Melia, Girch, Droa or Tsvlilebebistvis, number 4; the Coalition Strong Georgia or Dzlieri Lelo, number 9 and Sakartvelostvis, number 25.

This week, representatives from the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute arrived in Georgia to observe the parliamentary elections. They will join teams that have been assessing the election campaign situation since the summer. The legitimacy of the elections heavily relies on the evaluations made by these international observers regarding the fairness of the process.

In more news on the elections, a famous Georgian blogger known as the Depressed Georgian in South Korea, who lives in Seoul, shared a story about her failed attempt to register as an election observer.

According to the blogger, after she asked for observer status from the Georgian Embassy, she received a call offering her to be an observer for Otsneba. Every political party has its own observers, in addition to those from NGOs. She declined the offer because she supported the opposition and was then denied any observer status at all.

Soon, she discovered that despite her refusal, she was registered as an observer under Otsneba’s quota, and shared her frustration in a Facebook post.

The Election Administration of Georgia confirmed her status and stated that she needed to write an official letter to be removed from the list.

Next up, according to a Bloomberg article published on Monday, the 21st, Russian hackers infiltrated Georgian governmental structures and major companies between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty. Their targets included the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, the National Bank, as well as the energy and communication sectors. They also launched attacks on the Election Administration and media websites, and had access to the IT system of the Georgian railroad for two years. Western officials reportedly informed the Georgian counterparts about these breaches, however, there is no information on whether any actions were taken in response.

On Thursday, the 24th, the police raided the home of Eto Buziashvili and Sopho Gelava, two Georgian researchers who work for the Atlantic Council, an American think tank focused on international affairs. Officers confiscated laptops and other electronic communication devices during the raid. Authorities are investigating the organization on charges of fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion. Both researchers are studying Russian disinformation.

In other news, Mgzavrebi, a popular Georgian musical band, had a rough week. Kakhi Kaladze, the mayor of Tbilisi, hired them to play during the opening ceremony of a new park in Tbilisi. This event, scheduled for the same day as the pro-European rally, would have included Otsneba’s political members and party supporters. This announcement sparked backlash from a significant portion of Mgzavrebi’s fan base, who criticized their plans to play at an event organized by Otsneba.

So Mgzavrebi canceled their plans, which then led to criticism from Kaladze. He accused them of being hypocrites, stating that a band that often performs concerts in Russia is in no position to claim the moral high ground by refusing to play at Otsneba’s events.

According to an opinion essay by Joshua Kucera for the New York Times, Georgia has been breaking away from the US and Europe, with Otsneba pushing away the West. As a result, Georgian officials have received sanctions. The author says that the cause of the crisis Georgia is undergoing is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding that Otsneba refused to take sides because of the two thousand eight war against Russia, fearing that another battle would break out. So the West understood Georgia’s neutrality.

However, Otsneba began promoting a conspiracy theory in which a “global war party” was pushing Georgia to go to war against Russia on behalf of the West and Ukraine, and passed the Russian Law. The war impacted the the Caucasus region because Europe tried to get new transportation routes to Asia that bypassed Russia and buy Azerbaijani gas to reduce its dependence on Russia’s energy.

Kucera says that Georgia doesn’t need the West as much as before, with trading with the EU limited. Georgia is benefiting from Russia’s isolation from Western markets, and it now has more options.

The author argues that the opposition is not offering a viable solution, with many people setting their expectations of the West from the nineties and two thousands era, and are not adjusting to the current twenty twenty-four. He says that pro-Western Georgians are outsourcing their political power to Europe and America and are not making changes themselves. Kucera says that the opposition’s victory will only lead to a short-term solution.

He said that Otsneba may try to steal the election, and that the opposition would not recognize its defeat.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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Nakhvamdis!