Voters in Georgia Republic Are at a Crossroads: Russia or the West?

Voters cast ballots on Saturday in a parliamentary election that could derail the country’s pro-Western course.

Voters in Georgia, a mountainous country at the strategic center of the Caucasus, are casting their ballots in a parliamentary election on Saturday that could derail the country’s decades-long pro-Western course and push it closer to Russia and China.

The governing Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2012, seeks a supermajority. That way, the party has vowed, it could use the result to outlaw its main opponents, the United National Movement and its satellite groups.

In turn, the opposition, which has been divided into four main political forces, aims to end Georgian Dream’s rule and to more concretely steer the country toward membership in the European Union and NATO.

“The elections will decide whether Georgia will be democratic or authoritarian,” Giorgi Gakharia, a former prime minister and the leader of the For Georgia party, said in an interview. “The elections will decide Georgia’s future course not for the next four years, but for the next decade.”

The results will reverberate in the region and beyond.

After more than three decades of being among the most pro-Western states to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia could join the expanding group of illiberal states that try to perform a balancing act between Russia and China, and the West.

Western officials have been watching relations between Russia and the Georgian government with growing alarm.

In Moscow, the authorities have repeatedly commended the decision by Georgia’s government not to impose sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine. In May 2023, the Kremlin allowed Georgians to visit Russia without visas — offering them benefits similar to the short-term visa-free travel arrangement Georgians have been allowed in the European Union since 2017. This month, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia further eased regulations for Georgians to enter, allowing them to work and live in Russia for more than 90 days.

Amid these moves, in July, the United States said it had suspended $95 million in assistance to the government of Georgia. Last week, the European Union said that Georgia’s accession to the bloc had been paused. European officials also threatened to suspend visa-free travel for Georgians if the parliamentary election was deemed not free or fair.

Five major political groups, including the governing party, are competing for 150 seats in Parliament. The results, which should start arriving before midnight on Saturday, are hard to predict. Georgian Dream and the opposition both claim to be ahead, citing partisan polls. A poll affiliated with the governing party shows it winning more than 100 seats, enough to single-handedly change the Constitution.

On Friday, opposition leaders said they were confident they would win a majority.

“I am pretty sure that the Georgian people will choose European prosperity,” Tinatin Bokuchava, leader of the United National Movement party, said during a briefing with reporters.

For the Georgian opposition, the election could be a matter of survival. At a campaign rally on Wednesday in the capital, Tbilisi, the founder and informal leader of the Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, vowed to ban the United National Movement and the parties that have splintered from it “at the level of the Constitution.”

Speaking behind bulletproof glass, Mr. Ivanishvili, 68, said that after the election, opposition parties “will be held accountable for the crimes committed against the population of Georgia, including the most serious ones — war crimes — with full severity of the law.”

During the campaign, Mr. Ivanishvili has repeatedly blamed the opposition for Georgia’s five-day war with Russia in 2008. He has also called for Georgia to apologize to the people of South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia in the 1990s and expanded with Russian support in 2008.

Mr. Ivanishvili’s comments were condemned by opposition leaders, who called them “an unprecedented betrayal” and “an insult to the memory of the heroes who sacrificed for our country.” They have also accused him of trying to turn Georgia into an authoritarian and corrupt backyard satellite of Russia.

“He has cornered himself,” said Armaz Akhvlediani, a longtime Georgian lawmaker and former ally of Mr. Ivanishvili. “In this story, he cannot afford to lose.”

Georgia’s president, Salome Zourabichvili, who has nominal powers and vocally opposes Georgian Dream, raised the possibility that she could be impeached and jailed should the governing party win.

“This is an existential election,” she said on Thursday.

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