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Georgia’s crumbling European dream

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Georgia’s hope for greater integration with Europe hangs by a thread. The ruling Georgian Dream party, which is bringing the South Caucasus republic back into Russia’s orbit, declared victory in the weekend’s election. Georgia’s opposition parties and president say the vote was counterfeit; Observers alleged ballot stuffing, intimidation and fraud. Thousands of Georgians gathered in Tbilisi on Monday to contest the result, a week after an EU referendum was held in Moldova. almost lost in the middle of a pro-Russian vote-buying operation. Western leaders must be more robust by condemning irregularities in Georgia. It is not just the country’s European future that is at stake. So is Western credibility.

After coming to power in 2012, Georgian Dream rode two horses for years. The party created by billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili apparently kept open Georgians’ hopes of joining the EU and NATO, while gradually capturing state institutions and repairing relations with Russia, the former colonial overlord. However, since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine led the EU to offer Tbilisi a more concrete path to membership, the ruling party has taken steps that close that path. He has taken drastic measures against LGBT+ rights and has passed a “Foreign Agents” Law similar to that used to crush civil society in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Georgia’s course is being shaped by Ivanishvili’s whims and fears. As European integration became more of a reality, some domestic observers suggest that the billionaire and his circle resisted how the transparency and “de-oligarchization” efforts demanded by Brussels could affect their interests. GD is dark election campaign he described the choice for voters not as between Europe and Russia, but between a war with Moscow into which opposition parties and Western officials were supposed to drag the country, or peace under the government.

The Central Election Commission, whose nominations are now controlled by the ruling party, says Georgian Dream won 54 percent of the vote. But two exit polls conducted Saturday by independent pollsters whose projections have proven accurate in previous elections put support for the GD at 42 percent or less. Georgian Dream has taken advantage of the “positive” language of a monitoring mission led by the democratic arm of the OSCE, ignoring its criticism. Other missions have reported multiple irregularities and misuse of state and media resources by GD ahead of the elections. A local observation mission bringing together dozens of non-governmental groups said Monday it had uncovered “large-scale fraud” in 196 electoral districts.

Monitoring and opposition groups must present evidence as quickly as possible to support their claims. Western officials may be cautious about making more categorical comments until more evidence is available. But statements so far, especially from the EU, have been worryingly clumsy. Brussels needed 20 hours to ask the Georgian authorities to “investigate and resolve the irregularities.” It is very unfortunate that the first European leader to arrive in Tbilisi after the vote was Hungarian Viktor Orbán, an ally of Ivanishvili and Georgian Dream, in the latest in a series of unauthorized foreign policy initiatives by the incumbent of the presidency. rotating EU.

The EU and the US should now make it clear that they are prepared to sanction Ivanishvili’s circle and senior GD officials if abuses against democracy and human rights are confirmed, or if protests in Tbilisi are violently quelled. Failure to do so would be a betrayal of the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Georgians, especially among the young, for a future as part of the democratic world. It would also be exploited by the Kremlin, which is taking advantage of the distractions provided by the US presidential election and the war in the Middle East to intensify its efforts to bring former Soviet neighbors back into its sphere.

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