It was 2019, another turbulent year in Georgian politics. Months before he was controversially forced out of the Anaklia port project, still just-a-businessman Mamuka Khazaradze sent a special package to London. The package contained a letter that Khazaradze claimed was sent to him by then-Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia, who allegedly threatened to ruin the businessman’s reputation if he didn’t back the government. The text on the paper was printed, but Khazaradze – who the prosecution harassed with money laundering accusations – still hoped that British scientists could trace the minister’s fingerprints. You know, just in case Mr. Gakharia had tried his hand at origami before handing a threatening message to a middleman.
Months passed, and their paths diverged further. Gakharia’s public reputation took a blow when he claimed responsibility for the violent dispersal of “Gavrilov’s Night” protests. Khazaradze founded his political movement, Lelo, and lost the Anaklia project. The fingerprint samples collected by British experts were eventually delivered to Georgian prosecutors who denied they matched the fingerprints of Gakharia, who was now promoted to prime minister.
But years have passed, and forensics karma finally caught up with Gakharia – now an opposition leader – in the streets of Vienna. This time it was him seeking forensic advice after former parteigenossen said he was – quote – “a cokehead” who was introduced to drugs by a shadowy woman and lost his way. The Austrians confirmed that Gakharia was clean – but not of his political sins.
A few more years down the road, Gakharia would be (again?) sending messages to Khazaradze, but now as a fellow opposition party leader seeking an alliance. A (former) banker in a debt-ridden country uniting with an ex-official who was politically rewarded for police violence? A match made in heaven!
Here is Nini and the Dispatch newsletter trying to find out whether Georgia is about to witness yet another episode of the enemies-to-lovers saga.
With less than four months to go before Georgia’s crucial elections, one would think that the country would be in the midst of a hot campaign season. But the campaign has yet to reach its proper intensity – and we measure the proper intensity by the number of reports of violence from the regions, which so far is lacking. The most unusual events to hit the “rest of the country” so far are a rare series of tornadoes and a group of female opposition MPs roaming Georgian villages.
Little is known why tornadoes suddenly decided they were the one thing Georgia needed at this point in history. As for the newfound role of women politicians – well, some analysis we’ve come across says women are less prone to be targeted by mounting political violence since the Georgian moral code strictly forbids beating a woman who isn’t your wife. So there’s the answer – of sorts.
Yet another reason the opposition shied away from fully embarking on the campaign trail is their indecision about traveling companions. Georgia’s ruling party going almost Lukashenka-level rogue this spring gave the fragmented opposition some hope, but to succeed in the country’s first fully proportional elections in October, they face a hurdle – the five percent threshold.
Many outsiders expected the opposition groups to form alliances, but it proved difficult – and no wonder, given the size of egos involved. Some were confident they could stand a chance independently, while others insisted a single unified list was the winning formula. Exhausted, they self-imposed a deadline of July 8 to come up with a pre-election configuration. You guessed it right – they failed to meet the deadline and served their voters instead with a kind of storytelling festival where every party gave its own interpretation of the poll that was supposed to help with the optimum configuration of coalitions. And all the while, the said poll was kept secret.
Finally, Iago Kachkachishvili, a sociologist whose company did the (not-so-secret) poll, decided to shed some expert light on the findings. He said that the majority of Georgians favored a change of government, that pro-Western parties together had more support than the ruling Georgian Dream party, and that opposition voters supported opposition parties “uniting in certain configurations” so as not to leave their votes unrepresented. The poll didn’t show any one political configuration having a decisive advantage for mobilizing support, so the sociologist said it was up to the parties to decide.
So the good news that the opposition had a chance of winning came with the horrible prospect that the wrong alliances, or a refusal to form one, would ruin those chances.
Scenes from a marriage
We have still witnessed two happy marriages in the past few days—or, better said, the confirmation of vows with an open relationship element thrown in to spice things up a bit.
The United National Movement, the former ruling party that is now a shadow of its glorious self, and its erstwhile offshoot, Strategy Agmashenebeli, celebrated their already established union by adding some “fresh faces.”
The Akhali [“New”] platform, uniting former UNM leader Nika Melia and former UNM mandarin Nika Gvaramia, joined forces with the Girchi More Freedom / Droa pair, hoping to mix and match some professional and youth voters with sympathies to the “governance-era” UNM policies. Given that all of these groups are led by personalities who were at one time or another associated with the UNM, they were never going to hunt for staunchly anti-UNM votes. Both coalitions are expected to pass the 5% threshold easily.
One missing piece of the asteroid belt that emerged from the catastrophic fragmentation of UNM is European Georgia, led by former security council supremo Giga Bokeria. The party has been given a new lease on life after Tamar Chergoleishvili, Bokeria’s ambitious and straight-spoken life partner, left her editorial job for politics. She has since shown an equally great skill in attracting new voters and in wantonly alienating old allies. The party seems to be trying to position itself as a no-compromise right-liberal party, even holding Kramer-versus-Kramer style primaries in which its voters must choose between two lists, one led by Chergoleishvili and another by Bokeria.
But sometimes, the party seems to take its self-rightful principles so far that the rest cannot (or won’t) follow. This may come at the cost of loneliness: European Georgia says the UNM-Strategy Agmashenebeli group is ruled from the shadows by the jailed president Saakashvili and financed by his henchmen, who—they now say—also manipulate the Gvaramia-Melia duo.
In all this toxicity, Lelo might look like a nice (if boring and ideologically eclectic) guy to them. But that nice guy, haunted by traumas of earlier alliances with the UNM, might be again reluctant to deal with anyone associated with the former ruling party.
Say a Little Prayer
So far, Khazaradze’s Lelo has rejected courtship from his traditional nemesis, Gakharia’s For Georgia party. Some believe such an alliance could have a “third-way” appeal—it could attract anti-UNM opposition voters as well as former supporters of GD who balk at the ruling party’s newly found nativist streak.
Gakharia, at least, has nothing to lose. Lelo, on the other hand, must weigh its options carefully: dealing with Gakharia could cost them voters who distrust the former prime minister’s intentions and/or cannot forgive his past.
Minor players may gravitate around either Lelo or Gakharia (or both): Aleko Elisashvili’s Citizens, Anna Dolidze’s For People, and the second, “unhinged” Girchi. The first two have small followings and, with more resources, could prove to be campaign assets, particularly with their way of connecting with niche voters. The Girchi Number Two appears to be more stubborn and harder to trust, given its record of questionable deals with the ruling party.
Some even hope for a Salome Ex Machina scenario, with increasingly popular President Salome Zurabishvili throwing her hat into the ring. Could the president shame erstwhile enemies into coalitions by stressing the emergency of the moment and thus freeing the quarreling party bosses of the (apparently) unbearable burden of free will? We don’t know, but whatever the outcome, the campaign won’t be easy: the stakes have never been higher, and the standards have never been lower.
And when October 26 comes, voters will have to go to the polls with two prayers in their minds: one asking the Lord to make things work out, and another asking for forgiveness – for no matter who you vote for, there’s a good chance you’re ignoring someone else’s trauma.
