“Moldova faced today and in the last months an unprecedented attack on freedom and democracy in our country”, declared the president Maia Sandu, a week ago, after the preliminary results of the presidential elections and the referendum to amend the Constitution, with a view to joining to the EU. She blamed an attack by “criminal groups, together with forces hostile to our interests”, which would have sought to buy 300,000 votes.
A week away, after the parliamentary elections in Georgia, the president from Tbilisi, Salome Zurabishvili, was even harsher: “These elections cannot be recognized, because it would be a recognition of Russia’s intrusion here, of Georgia’s subordination to Russia”. She called on Georgians to take to the streets and protest the victory of the Georgian Dream party (54%, after 99% of the votes were counted), saying it was “a total falsification, a total theft of your votes”.
President Zurabisvili’s candidacy was supported precisely by the Georgian Dream, the ruling party led by Bidzina Ivanisvili, an oligarch who made a fortune in Russia, considered the country’s de facto leader. Now the position of the president is identical to that of the opposition. “Georgians were robbed of their victory. We will not accept the results of these falsified elections,” said Tinatin Bokuchava, the leader of the main opposition party, the United National Movement, the party of former president Mikheil Saakashvili.
Prolonged protests, sometimes lasting a year, have become a regular phenomenon in Georgia. However, the waves of protests from the 12 years of government so far by the Georgian Dream party have been treated positively in the West, while the protests that may break out in Chisinau (in the context of the border crossing of the EU referendum and a narrow victory of President Maia Sandu) are a destabilizing phenomenon.
Within a week we had to deal with elections in two small ex-Soviet republics – one with a majority pro-Western population and a pro-Russian government (in the case of Georgia) and one with a majority Eurosceptic population unwilling to NATO, but led by a pro-Western government (Republic of Moldova). There was also a great similarity: in both states, pro-Western parties with pro-Western pedigrees, Western media and US and European officials treated these elections as decisive for the future of EU enlargement, for the future of the West even, presented them as on some elections in which the people face the forces of evil, the dictatorship and the bottom of Siberia. Everything has been presented as a zero-sum game between Russia and the West, ignoring the fact that this is the vote of people who want to see something happen in their ordinary lives, that they want economic growth that can be felt in their pockets (or, the rate of economic growth in the Republic of Moldova has decreased in the last decade, trade with the EU has increased a lot, but this is due to imports from the West, not necessarily exports). As early as the summer of this year, Georgian analysts were anticipating a victory for the government considered pro-Russian over an opposition unable to form a coalition, and were also anticipating calls for non-recognition of the result and massive protests.
Standard Western media accounts of the political situation in Georgia portray the Georgian Dream party (often called the Georgian Nightmare) as a pro-Russian formation opposed to truly “democratic” and pro-Western parties. The same reports do not contain a detailed presentation, in the electoral context, of the “pro-Russian” law that obliges NGOs with over 20% foreign funding to register as “foreign agents”. The poor performance of the opposition in the 2024 elections can almost be attributed to this law.
But the reality is more complex. Many of the active members of the Georgian Dream Party are young people who have experience in the NGO environment, in UN agencies, in private companies. The profile of the politicians now in power is not so different from that of former President Saakashvili’s underlings. The law for the transparency of NGOs is called by the opposition and the western press “the Russian law”, but it can just as well be called the “American law”, as long as there is a law of “foreign agents” in the USA, while in Europe they have began to eliminate any funding from Russia, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the US have already called for investigations into the work of Chinese-funded Confucius Institutes. Worse than this “Russian law” is that the West has made it quite clear so far that, in the event of a victory for the Georgian Dream in October 2014, economic and political support for Georgia will be frozen. This would have a devastating effect on the plight of poor citizens – the majority of the population. The prosperity of middle-class citizens (ie the richest 10% of Georgians) depends most on the state of NGOs; an article published this year by two activists for women’s rights from the ex-Soviet space – Almut Rochowanski and Sopo Japaridze shows that working in a Georgian NGO is the way to good incomes, to trips to the West, receptions at embassies and entry into the category of the Georgian elite. On the other hand, Georgian NGOs do not care too much about the results of their activities, as long as they do not have to answer to the citizens, but tick off the actions requested by the foreign financiers. Sometimes an uninspired post on a social network attracts more penalties for an NGO than the failure of a program in a locality.
Georgia won EU candidate status in December 2023, only to have financial support and the negotiation process frozen this summer, along with freezing millions of dollars in US aid and sanctions on officials, all starting from the NGO financing transparency law – which receive 90% of money from abroad.
The government led by the Georgian Dream has not officially given up on the old goals of joining the EU and NATO. But Georgia has been the theater of war since August 2008, when it lost a significant part of its territory and when the republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia proclaimed their independence, a war that was seen as Russia’s clearest signal that it would not accept membership at NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, after the Alliance had opened the door to them, at the summit in April, in Bucharest. Then, Georgia does not border NATO allies like France or Germany, but Turkey, a state that pursues a policy of active neutrality regarding the war in Ukraine, which is speculating on this conflict to strengthen its position in the South Caucasus, in the republics central asian. As for joining the EU, neighboring Turkey is, again, an example that can discourage the Georgian political class – Ankara has been waiting for decades, without success, for admission to the EU.
The Georgian Dream government sought to pursue a balanced and pragmatic policy, taking into account geopolitical realities, the need to raise the standard of living and the fact that there are Russian troops on the internationally recognized territory of the country. The government led from the shadows by pro-Russian Bidzina Ivanishvili has not given up on restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity, lost under pro-Western president Mikheil Saakashvili. The current government knows that this will not be achieved by force of arms, but through diplomacy and improving relations with the separatist republics. These are some of the reasons why the Georgian government condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine, but refused to adopt the European set of sanctions against Russia, refused to send weapons to Ukraine (but turned a blind eye to Georgian volunteers going to fight in Ukraine, where they are the most important foreign contingent), resumed commercial flights to Russia, opened the gates to Russian tourists. As many analyzes note, Georgians consider Russia to be an aggressor state, but they want Russian money and are looking to do business with Russian companies.
This is even more visible in the case of China. Many Georgians wish their country had been in southern Europe, not the southern Caucasus, but the geographical position also brings advantages. One of them concerns China’s major trade routes and oil and gas transport routes in Azerbaijan and Central Asia. Bidzina Ivanishvili’s party often resorted to a speech that contrasted Europe’s economic plight with China’s rise as a case for expanded cooperation with Beijing – massive investment in major infrastructure works, from bridges and roads to a new Black Sea port at Anaklia, a Chinese outpost for trade with the EU. The congratulatory message addressed by the Hungarian Prime Minister to the Georgian Dream Party should be seen in this context, given that Budapest is pursuing rapprochement with the South Caucasus and the Central Asian republics (Turkey has invited Hungary to join the Organization of Turkish States), all in order to obtain a better position in an area that will become critical for Europe’s energy supply.
The parliamentary elections in Georgia were lost by the pro-Western opposition, the referendum in the Republic of Moldova passed by a few tenths of a percent, and the president Maia Sandu, given as the winner from the first round in many polls, trembles in the second round (and in the parliamentary elections from 2025 it will be even harder). In both cases, Russian machinations, vote buying, are correctly pointed out. But little is said about the fact that the pro-Western camp in Georgia and the one in Chisinau called their electorate to vote geopolitically, in a black and white game between imperial Russia and the democratic West, as if it were not known to address some of the poorest populations in Europe, for whom, beyond the war in Ukraine, concern for tomorrow is the main cause of insecurity. What did this electorate get? Geopolitics, Ursula von der Leyen’s visits to Chisinau, Charles Michel’s mediations in Tbilisi, aid for the pro-Western government, freezing of funds and negotiations for the Eurosceptic government. Maybe Maia Sandu and Tinatin Bokuchava will come to the conclusion that they should have made an election campaign about the Republic of Moldova and Georgia and their current citizens, not just about the nightmare of war and the beautiful dream of joining the EU and NATO.
Source: www.cotidianul.ro
