BBCGeorgians know all about Russia’s wars. A few years before Russia invaded Ukraine, the country’s military launched a five-day war in August 2008. The city of Gori was bombed and occupied, and a fierce battle to the north in Shindisi left the station was destroyed and the railway line abandoned.
So when four domestic opposition groups cast Saturday’s crucial election as a choice between Russia or Europe, their aim is to end 12 years of rule by the ruling Georgian Dream party, which they allegedly returned to Russia’s orbit.
They want to revive Georgia’s stalled bid to join the European Union.
“On these streets we have Russians,” said Mindia Goderdzishvili, a campaign manager for the opposition group Coalition for Change in Gori. “The people here have this in their memories and the government uses this badly, exploiting their emotions because they want to maintain power.”
Georgian Dream, known as GD, and its powerful billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili vehemently deny the opposition sees the vote as a choice between Russia or Europe.
They argued that their party was a party of peace, while the opposition, backed by an unidentified “global war party” wanted to drag Georgia into war.
A short distance from the bombed-out station in Shindisi are the graves of 17 Georgian soldiers who died defending the town. The line is not far to the north and beyond that lies South Ossetia, one of two breakaway Georgian regions still under Russian military occupation.
“I don’t think anyone can guarantee Georgia’s security today,” Maka Bochorishvili, head of Georgia’s EU integration committee, told the BBC at Georgian Dream’s new headquarters in Tbilisi.
“We are not members of NATO, we do not have an umbrella over our heads. The last war in 2008 took place not long ago.”
Her party still promises to bring Georgia, the former Soviet republic, into the European Union by 2030, but that commitment appears hollow as the EU has halted the process over a law aimed at “influence of foreign countries” is threatening countless media agencies and non-governmental groups.
Add to that recent legislation targeting LGBT rights in Georgia and local reports of voter intimidation, and it’s no surprise that EU ambassador Pawel Herczynski feels that “instead of coming closer together, Georgia is moving away from the European Union.”
On Thursday, financial police raided the homes of two women living in Tbilisi who were members of the research team of the US-based Atlantic Council think tank. The Prime Minister suggested that searches “may uncover something interesting”.
Getty ImagesPro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili has publicly called on Georgians to support opposition groups who have backed her plan for a one-year technocratic government if they win.
Much of the attention in this election has focused on Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest person, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and is seen as the guiding force behind the ruling party.
Ivanishvili took part in Saturday’s election promising to ban the largest opposition party, the United National Movement, for what it did before GD came to power.
Former UNM leader Mikheil Saakashvili is locked up in prison, but the GD also wants to go after other opposition figures, so the ban could go beyond one party. For that to happen, they need to win a large majority.
That seems unlikely, although opinion polls in Georgia are unreliable and questions have been raised about the secrecy of the vote, despite a new electronic voting system.
Ivanishvili visited Gori during the election campaign and promised to apologize to the people of South Ossetia for the 2008 war, which he blamed on Saakashvili’s government, not the Russians who bombed the city.
ReutersThe billionaire doubled down on that at the party’s final campaign rally in central Tbilisi on Wednesday. Speaking behind protective glass, he told supporters that UNM had committed treason.
Perhaps his rationale was that by going after the largest opposition party, voters would not be able to support any other party.
For Aleksandre, a 30-year-old voter in Shindisi, the idea that Saakashvili launched the war is “absurd”.
Most people his age have left town because there aren’t many opportunities there.
He wanted the government to focus on restoring the railway and protecting Georgians from Russian encroachment on Georgian soil.
The Kremlin has made no secret of its preference for the Georgian Dream.
A few months ago, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency SVR accused the US of preparing to stage a Ukrainian-style street revolution to prevent GD from winning a fourth term. SVR has no evidence for its allegations and the US has denied it.
Now Russia has relied on the founder of Georgian Dream’s unfounded allegation that a high-ranking foreign official asked the former prime minister of Georgia to join the war with Russia “for three or four days”.
“I don’t see any reason not to believe it [it]”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian media.
Gori’s memories of Georgia’s northern neighbor are not based solely on what happened in 2008.
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin grew up here and tourists come here to see his childhood home and personal railway carriage, although tour guides no longer mention the millions he made sent to those who died in Soviet re-education camps.
Opposition campaigners in Gori say some voters still have lingering feelings for the Soviet era, but most people have moved on.
The broad consensus here and across Georgia is that its future lies within the European Union, not outside it. What’s unclear is who they think will give them that opportunity.
