Georgia jolted, protests break out after pro-Russia party wins disputed elections

He said the introduction of new electronic voting machines for this election likely allowed officials to falsify the votes, and that election fraud also included buying votes and intimidating public workers into voting for the ruling party.

“I'm not surprised that they massively falsify elections,” he said, speaking by telephone from Tbilisi. “This group has quite a rich experience with electoral fraud, falsifications.”

He said there was ample evidence the previous parliamentary elections won by Georgian Dream in 2020 also were rigged.

He doubted Georgia's courts and legal authorities could be relied on to properly verify the election results due to deeply entrenched corruption.

“It's a mafia which has captured the state,” he said. “Who will investigate? Nobody. Nobody will be jailed.”

He said the country's high courts, police, interior ministry and other legal bodies are run by Ivanishvili's cronies and allies.

Other political experts Courthouse News spoke with expressed similar views.

“These results were changed and reordered at the level of the central election commission,” said Zarina Burkadze, a political scientist at the Ilia State University in Tbilisi, in an email.

She said polls suggested Georgian Dream would win about 32% of the vote and that opposition parties would jointly accumulate more votes than the ruling party.

She said discontent with Georgian Dream has been growing with anger spilling over this spring after it adopted a law targeting foreign-funded organizations. The law's passage sparked mass protests that were met with a harsh police reaction.

Kukhianidze expected police to brutally crack down on a new round of mass protests and that Georgian Dream will not back down from its pro-Russia direction.

“They will just use the police, riot police; they will use gas, tear gas; they will use these water machines [on people]; they will beat people; they will use rubber bullets against people; but they will not change their position,” he said.

However, he doubted there is enough anger in Georgian society for events to lead to an overthrow of the government: “There is no revolutionary situation now in Georgia.”

Instead, he said Georgian Dream will move the country further away from the West and deeper into the Russian sphere.

“If you look at their propaganda, you don't see any difference between Russian and Georgian propaganda,” he said. “Everything is clear now, black and white, they took the side of Russia.”

Georgian Dream also has succeeded in shoring up support by cracking down on bribe-taking by mid-level officials, such as police, and keeping the country's economy on track, experts said.

Matsaberidze said Georgia's economic situation is stable in part because of Georgia's openness toward Russia and China. He said the government's economic policies and subsidy programs have won support among rural voters, for instance from wine makers keen to sell their products in Russia. Georgia has not imposed sanctions on Russia, defying demands to do so by the West.

“Rural areas are dependent on the government in terms of bureaucracy,” Matsaberidze said. “They can easily buy the hearts and minds of that electorate.”

In this election, Georgian Dream also won votes by portraying its friendly stance toward Russia as a strategy to avoid war with its belligerent northern neighbor. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and its troops still occupy two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

By contrast, Georgian Dream said a win by the opposition parties would drag the country into war with Russia.

“Their slogans and propaganda against the war worked,” Kukhianidze said.

He said the party's message resonated with many Georgians who remain skeptical about Western commitment to Georgia in the wake of events in 2008. Shortly after the invasion, Western powers resumed trade relations with Russia “as though nothing had happened,” he said.

“The West forgot about Georgia,” he said.

Also, in watching the war in Ukraine, he said many Georgians have been let down by Western powers due to their reluctance to give Ukraine the weapons that might defeat Russia. Most recently, he cited the refusal by Washington to allow Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia for fear of igniting a wider war.

“A lot of Georgian citizens think: 'OK, it's better for me to have peace even if we are turned toward Russia than to have these destroyed Georgian cities like Mariupol and many other cities of Ukraine,'” he said.

“So, a part of responsibility for what happened in Georgia lies with the West too,” he said.

Despite this election setback, he said Georgia will remain on the path toward the West because its younger generations are wary of Russia and are Westward looking.

“Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a whole generation of young people was born and grew up in an atmosphere with Russia trying to conquer Georgia,” he said. “A lot of young people traveled to the West; thousands of students graduated from the best American and European universities: they follow a Western way of life, and of course it's not the end of this story.”

But Matsaberidze wasn't so optimistic.

“If the Georgian Dream will maintain power, it will stay in the majority for the next four years until 2028, so that means the European dream is over, absolutely,” he said. “It's going to be like Putin's Russia.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau