Voting for Their Jobs

As we sped down Georgia’s main highway, the spine of the country linking east and west, Vato Bzhalava, who had helped set up this trip, showed me a video. He had made it as plainclothes policemen bundled him into a van during last spring’s anti-government demonstrations in the capital, Tbilisi. By chance, journalists who were livestreaming the protest also filmed the moment, and his friends saw the footage. This was lucky. Georgia is a small place; one way or another everyone knows everyone. Messages got through to the police: “Don’t beat up Vato!” They did not. Others were not so lucky.

Vato is a moustachioed thirty-four-year-old researcher at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS). We were on our way to Akhaltsikhe, a small town eleven miles from the Turkish border. Signs giving the distances to Tehran and Ankara flashed by. Close to the turnoff for Stalin’s birthplace at Gori, we passed within a third of a mile of the southernmost tip of South Ossetia, the de facto Russian-controlled territory that broke away during the early 1990s. Russian troops can close the highway here with one pop of a mortar, but Vato and others told me that the soldiers normally stationed in this region and the other breakaway territory, Abkhazia, had been uprooted from their cushy southern posting and sent to fight in Ukraine: “There are only a couple left who come out in the morning and mow the grass.”

From 1990 to 1995 Georgians lived through two secessionist wars and a violent civil conflict. This was followed by several bouts of political upheaval and instability, including, in 2008, a direct Russian military intervention. Now all signs suggest that general elections next month could lead to further turbulence. A central issue is Georgia’s quest for membership in Euro-Atlantic structures like the European Union and NATO, which the ruling party, Georgian Dream, says it wants. The question is whether you believe it.

Polls consistently show that Georgians overwhelmingly want to integrate with both, and for two decades the country made steady progress along that path. Last December, in response to the war in Ukraine, the EU unexpectedly gave it candidate status—a major step on the way to membership. Then something strange happened: in the months after the country secured candidacy, Georgian Dream began to move against civil society. In May parliament passed a Russian-style “foreign agents law,” allegedly to ensure financial transparency. Supporters of the opposition, tens of thousands of whom took to the streets to protest the law over the course of the spring, believe it’s actually aimed at shutting down NGOs that track government corruption and other misconduct. This week, meanwhile, lawmakers passed legislation prohibiting LGBT “propaganda,” allowing the government to censor books and films as well as ban pride events and the LGBT flag. (Gay marriage is not legal in Georgia.) If it wins the elections, Georgian Dream also promises to ban opposition parties, which Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has called “criminal political forces.”

In June, thanks to the NGO laws and the legislature’s plans to restrict gay rights, the EU froze the accession process. To many in the opposition, all of this suggests that the party’s leaders might never have really wanted to join the EU to begin with. Doing so would, for instance, require them to relinquish control of the judiciary and other institutions that are supposed to be independent. Countries like Hungary have only been able to backtrack on their democratic commitments after accession.

I was in Georgia as a guest of the GFSIS and the German Marshall Fund, an American foundation that supports democratic initiatives. Our small group of western journalists and analysts spoke to a slew of movers and shakers in Tbilisi, including leading opposition figures. No one from the government or Georgian Dream would meet us. Visiting deputies from the Bundestag, the German parliament, were also snubbed that week. State officials did, however, have time to meet with a visiting Malaysian parliamentarian—despite the fact that Germany and the EU are major donors to Georgia while Malaysia is not.

Activists and opposition leaders in the capital are convinced that Georgian Dream’s days are numbered and that their diverse group of parties, many grouped together in various coalitions, stands to win the elections. (The day after his release, Vato told me, he bumped into a senior policeman who had detained him. He told Vato to keep up the good work.) But Tbilisi is not Georgia, and elsewhere support for the opposition is much weaker. After the group I was with departed, I stayed. I wanted to go somewhere out of town.

Vato and I turned off the highway and passed through Borjomi—the Vichy of the east, in the sense that it supplies a mineral water much loved across the former Soviet Union. We arrived in time for lunch in Akhaltsikhe, which is dominated by an impressive crenelated fortress. Over the past 1,200 years the town has been ruled by Arabs, Georgian princes, Byzantines, Ottomans, Russians, Soviets, and now Georgians again. It is set in an agricultural region, known for cattle, dairy, and sunflower products. The town is home to anywhere between 15,000 and 22,000 people, depending on whom you ask.

Workmen puffed away under the hot sun, building a stage for an event the next day, when Georgian Dream’s founder, the eccentric billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, was scheduled to speak. A big bulletproof glass screen was ready for him to stand behind. Bus stops and walls were plastered with posters bearing the party’s slogan: “Europe with Dignity.”

But many voters in small places like this may not be voting for Europe, against gay rights, or to shut down western-funded NGOs. They might be voting for their jobs. In every election since the demise of the Soviet Union, the majority in Akhaltsikhe and other similar towns has always voted for the party in power. As in many other eastern European countries, a large proportion of local jobs and municipal contracts depends on who is in charge. Many bosses directly tell their employees whom to vote for. Others might feel it is prudent to stand by the status quo. If the ruling party changes, so does the source of their patronage. New bosses will parcel out jobs and contracts to their own friends and family instead.

As we drove through Borjomi, Vato told me that he had been working as a journalist in 2012, when Georgian Dream defeated President Mikheil Saakashvili’s party in the general election. Saakashvili had once himself been a figure of change: he was elected in 2004 in the aftermath of the Rose Revolution, a nonviolent uprising that toppled President Eduard Shevardnadze, who served as the last Soviet foreign minister. The first four years of his tenure saw hugely positive changes, but the second was marked by increasing authoritarianism, corruption, and violence. For many Georgians, Saakashvili became then—and remains—politically toxic; since 2021 he has been in prison for abuse of power, a charge he denies. Now some polls have found that his party, the United National Movement (UNM), plus smaller allies, is the biggest of the opposition blocs, but it is still much diminished. Today, though, Vato told me, the feeling of change in the air feels familiar—but with Ivanishvili playing the lead part. 

Ivanishvili briefly served as prime minister after the 2012 election. I met him just at the moment of his victory. One of the country’s wealthiest men, he had made his billions in Russia, first in the computer business and then by profiting off the privatization of Soviet banking and metals assets. He talked about the necessity of joining the EU and NATO. Then he showed me an artwork in his house that proclaimed: SAY FUCK OFF TO RICH BASTARDS. Because I am from London, like the gay artistic duo who created it, he asked me: “Do you know Gilbert & George?”

Ivanishvili promised that, having ousted Saakashvili, he would resign—and in 2013 he did. Ever since, however, he is widely believed to be running the country from behind the scenes. He no longer talks about NATO membership but still promises EU accession by 2030, despite the current freeze. Recently he seems to have become increasingly isolated and paranoid, making speeches about a mysterious “Global War Party,” which wants to push Georgia into conflict to open a “second front” against Russia. Ivanishvili connects this shadowy force to the work of western-funded NGOs.

Russian officials are delighted and Westerners are baffled, although they concede that it would have been hard for Georgia to impose sanctions on Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as the EU and other western countries did. Russia effectively already controls a fifth of Georgia’s territory in the form of the two breakaway regions. Its military forces, though depleted, are still only an hour’s drive from Tbilisi. On September 15, at a rally in Gori, Ivanishvili blamed the UNM for the 2008 war with Russia. He added that there should be a “Nuremberg trial” for its members and that Georgia should apologize to the people of Russian-controlled South Ossetia for the conflict—an explosive statement for a country where anti-Russian sentiment runs high.

Some have theorized, as one ambassador told us in Tbilisi, that Ivanishvili is embittered by the fact that he invested more than a billion dollars with the now defunct Credit Suisse bank, only to lose them as a result of embezzlement, fraud, and mismanagement. For years he has been fighting in courts around the world to get his money back. Apparently, the ambassador said, Ivanishvili believes that western governments could return the funds, “if they wanted to.” More recently, he imported eight baobab trees from Kenya to a park he had founded on the Black Sea coast. (It is also home to a collection of exotic and endangered birds.) When they died, the park management blamed the UNM. The party and “so-called” NGOs had raised ethical and environmental concerns that in turn caused an uproar in Kenya, which delayed the park from exporting and eventually replanting the giant, uprooted trees until it was too late.

In a restaurant in the keep of Akhaltsikhe’s castle, Vato and I lunched with Rusudan Gvaramadze, a local journalist. In Tbilisi it seemed to me that a lot of people were in the mood to say “fuck off” to the “rich bastards” who had gotten wealthy in recent years through their connections with Georgian Dream. That, Gvaramadze said, was not the case here. People “are afraid of change,” she told us, and not just because they worry about their jobs. Many believe Georgian Dream’s claim that only it can keep the country out of war.

In the last two years, Gvaramadze said, things have been tough in Akhaltsikhe. One major reason is inflation, which is forcing locals to drive over the border to go and shop in Turkey, where goods are cheaper. People have been leaving Georgia for decades, she pointed out, but in the last two years there has been an upsurge in emigration. Her brother had gone to the US recently. Like many Georgians, he flew to Mexico and crossed the border illegally.

Since 2017 Georgians have not needed visas to visit the EU. Many of them go, stay illegally, and work. That afternoon, a café owner told me that his company, which includes a bakery, had trouble recruiting staff because so many people have gone abroad. In Poland, where the pay is much better, it is relatively easy to secure a work permit. Men go to work there while women tend to go to Italy, Turkey, and Germany, often to take care of the elderly.

About a third of Akhaltsikhe’s people are ethnic Armenians. Tsira Meskhishvili, who runs an NGO dealing with minority rights and environmental issues, reported that interethnic relations have always generally been good. Then she told a story that suggested that Georgian Dream might have misjudged at least some of the people it thinks of as core supporters, including ethnic minorities and conservative villagers. A few days earlier Meskhishvili had seen local party bigwigs campaign in a nearby ethnic Armenian village of twenty-five families. They used the party’s anti-LGBT stance as an electoral pitch, while also insisting that, despite their antigay line and the NGO law, Georgia was still on track for EU membership.

These arguments often work, Gvaramadze told me: “they say, ‘Europe will try to take away our culture.’” But here, Meskhishvili recounted, it was a complete flop. The villagers “did not know what they were talking about. They said they did not have mains drinking water.” When one of the officials said they would fix it, the villagers retorted, “you should have done it years ago!”

Ploughing through a series of rich cakes at a café, I chatted with the elegant Tamuna Uchidze, who investigates crooked local barons for the NGO Transparency International. “Local government,” she said, “is the most corrupt thing here.” Businessmen, for example, could easily circumvent or ignore irksome planning regulations. Others told me similar stories. A small business owner who asked to remain unnamed said that the authorities were known to shake down companies larger than his for cash. When Gvaramadze was reporting a corruption story the previous day, local officials refused to talk to her, which was par for the course. During the anti-government demonstrations in spring, like many others known to have opposition sympathies, she received threatening calls and messages calling her a “traitor.” I asked her if she felt safe. She said she did not.

Meskhishvili said that after the passage of the NGO law the government and those who supported Georgian Dream saw organizations like hers as “enemies.” Vato could hardly plan anything in his life because GFSIS could be closed down if Georgian Dream were to win the election and the NGO law was not reversed. If the Georgian branch of Transparency International was closed, Uchidze would consider emigrating.

Tim Judah

Tamuna Uchidze at a café in Akhaltsikhe, September 2024

Tim Judah

Irakli Lazarashvili, the mayor of Akhaltsikhe, in his office, September 2024

As soon as we arrived in Akhaltsikhe, Vato and I had dropped in unannounced on the Georgian Dream election headquarters and asked if we could speak to someone. A few hours later we were unexpectedly invited to talk to the mayor, Irakli Lazarashvili. Perhaps, out here in the sticks, he had not got the message not to speak with western visitors. Bull-necked and balding, he sat shaded from the sun by European flags standing in as curtains. The opposition, I put it to him, claims that Georgian Dream is taking the country back into Moscow’s orbit. He scoffed. For two hundred years Georgians had fought the Russians, he replied: Russia “is our enemy.” When it came to LGBT propaganda, he said, “teaching kids in schools that they can change sex without the permission of their parents is unacceptable to me. Even Elon Musk is against this!”

When I said that the EU had frozen Georgia’s accession process, Lazarashvili maintained that the country was still on course for membership—but it was hard to follow his convoluted explanation. Despite his party’s pledge, he said it would not ban opposition parties. They would effectively ban themselves, he said, by breaking the law: “They can’t stand our success!” What law that was—or will be—was unclear.

Walking around town that evening, Vato and I chatted with groups of old ladies who were nattering together on benches, women pulling down the shutters on their shops, and families out for a stroll. We asked how things seemed in the run-up to the election. The most common answers were “calm” and “peaceful.” Three old ladies said they had complained about a building that was falling down in their street but that “no one cares about small people like us.” Others would come to see Ivanishvili speak the next day. One woman would skip it, however, because she planned to watch a football match on TV.

Some countrywide polls show Georgian Dream in the lead, but others favor the opposition parties, and all include a large number of undecided voters. With no clear trend emerging, whoever loses the election will find it easier to cry foul. Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, has said that if the opposition loses, the United States is planning a “Tbilisi Maidan,” by which he means a coup. The US has no means to overthrow Georgia’s government, even if it wanted to—which seems far-fetched. (Americans vote ten days after Georgians: the White House will have other issues to worry about.) But Naryshkin may be laying the ground to deem the results illegitimate if the opposition wins. In that case Georgian Dream might still claim victory, tens of thousands may come out to protest, and then all bets will be off. Akhaltsikhe, for its part, will wait to see who emerges victorious and duly follow suit.