The morning after Georgia’s October 26 parliamentary elections, the country awoke to a disturbing reality: official results showed the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party securing 53.9% of the vote. This number seemed plucked from the Kremlin’s playbook of election manipulation. However, the result was not simply a matter of fudging the final tally; it was an outcome of a sophisticated and multi-layered strategy designed to appear legitimate while manipulating every facet of the electoral process. Georgia is now poised for a protracted political crisis and faces uncertain months of street protests, repressions, further radicalization, alienation from the European future, and rapprochement with Russia. The aftermath has left Georgia’s friends in the West with a troubling question: how to respond to a democratic façade masking an increasingly autocratic state?
This 12th issue of GEOpolitics is fully dedicated to the October 2024 elections and its intricacies. We explain what happened, why it happened, and what options Western allies have for grappling with Georgia’s deepening political crisis.
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