About author: Ilya Roubanis, PhD (EUI, Florence) is an Area Studies expert specialising in the South Caucasus and Central Asia

The incumbent party of government in Georgia, the Georgian Dream (GD), is moving away from the Party of European Socialists (PES). In a brief statement on Thursday, May 11, the leader of Georgian Dream, Irakli Kobakhidze, spoke of a misalignment of values that inevitably leads to a parting of ways. 

As long as PES was perceived as a powerful political force that could shield Georgia from certain types of criticism, that misalignment was invisible. Political party diplomacy is not usually of a geopolitical nature but is central to international legitimacy, particularly in a country that wants to join the EU. 

However, the recent decision of the Georgian prime minister to address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest – one of the foremost conservative platforms in the world – forced PES Vice President Kati Piri to observe a clash of values. This choice also drew the ire of US Democratic pundits, some of whom had in the past been supportive of the GD government. 

The question here is what opened this rare ideological debate in Georgia; it would be refreshing if it were convincing. 

When the Storyline Does Not Match the Act     

The clash of values between GD and PES is now a point of consensus in Brussels and Tbilisi.   

On May 4, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced his intention to deliver the keynote address at CPAC in Budapest. The event is a global conservative extravaganza that convenes European and American leaders of the far right and is hosted by Prime Minister Victor Orban. It features European household names such as former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and the former head of the German Secret Service, Hans-Georg Maassen. There are also US guest stars such as Congressman Paul Cosar, the President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, and former US Attorney General Matt Whitaker. The stage is set for a conservative repertoire that is anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, anti-globalist, and pro-Christian. Clearly, that does not represent social democracy.      

This ultra-conservative gathering painted a target on the Georgian government, as both in Europe and the United States there are concerns that this cultural strain of conservatism undermines unity of purpose against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Talking to the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Georgian Parliament, Nikoloz Samkharadze, I was told that Garibashvili’s participation in the CPAC event should not be seen as an endorsement of the forum’s ideological agenda but rather as a courtesy address in the context of an official visit by the Georgian Prime Minister to Hungary. As to why would anyone engage with Europe’s mutton noir, Victor Orban, Samkharadze argues that Georgia is lobbying for its EU candidate status and Hungary has been supportive. 

A day after the interview it became clear that Georgia had possibly won over Budapest but lost key supporters in Brusselsirreversibly. On the day GD announced its departure from PES, Prime Minister Garibashvili traced the rupture with the Socialist Group back to February 15, when a European Parliament Resolution called for the release from prison of former President Mikheil Saakashvili. At the time, Garibashvili notes, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) failed to stand behind the Georgian government en bloc. Interestingly, the leader of GD’s party, Irakli Kobakhidze, praised Hungarian MEPs for standing behind the Georgian government.

In our discussion, Samkharadze bitterly noted the role of the French Socialist MEP, Raphael Glucksman, a former Saakashvili assistant (2005-2012), who is apparently constantly lobbying against the GD government and the rehabilitation of Saakashvili’s image. The French MEP plays a role in formulating S&D political discourse in the region, serving both in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the EU-Moldova Parliamentary Association Committee. In Tbilisi, he is considered a persistent rather than significant troublemaker, but it goes to show that Misha [Mikhail Saakashvili] has a lot of friends in Brussels. In sum, for the last few months, the S&D was perceived as failing to deliver for GD, while Budapest was more obliging.

The Drama of the S&D Breakup     

The breaking of ties with the Party of European Socialists means GD will lose valuable support. 

The second-largest political movement in Europe was not the dominant force of the 1980s and 1990s. However, PES member parties still lead governments in Germany, Spain, Portugal, and Romania. Furthermore, they traditionally reserve a significant quota in the Brussels apparatus, including the Vice President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans. At the moment, they also count NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg among their ranks. 

The post-Soviet space is usually dominated by conservative parties.

The opposition United National Movement (UNM) of former President Mikheil Saakashvili is a member of the European Popular Party, the strongest political movement in Europe. Saakashvili is also known to have strong allies among the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), particularly in Poland, founded on a personal friendship between Misha and Leh Kaczynski. 

Other members of the Georgian opposition are committed to a vision of pro-Western socioeconomic transformation that is explicitly liberal. Therefore, they are members of the ALDE grouping: the Republican Party, the Free Democrats, LELO, GIRCHI, and Strategy Aghmashenebeli. By positioning themselves as the sole member of the Social Democrats in the region, GD has access to an exclusive club. 

A figure instrumental in building GD’s relationship with the Socialists and Democrats group in Brussels is the former MP and head of the party’s international relations, Dimitri Tskitishvili. For at least two decades, he has been active on every European social democratic forum in the region and is known as a social rights campaigner. In 2020, he succeeded in passing a comprehensive labour rights reform bill, redressing the dire situation of working standards in Georgia. That bill is obviously at the heart of the social democratic agenda, as are the foundation of a universal healthcare programme, the initiation of a public housing programme, and the increase in social transfers since 2013. Initially, GD was “on brand.”

However, Tskitishvili admits that GD’s relationship with the S&D group was always somewhat transactional. The political consensus in Georgia remains a blend of economic and political liberalism and social conservatism. The social democratic faction of the party left in 2018, maintaining a degree of legislative coordination. A GD commitment to social conservatism caused the first major rupture in July 2021, when the Georgian government failed to protect the LGBT pride parade and took a “pro-family” stand not entirely respectful     of individual freedoms. 

In March 2023, the GD government passed the so-called “Foreign Agents Law,” which obliged media platforms, CSOs, and even academic institutions that received income from abroad to declare themselves as “foreign agents.” This register would in turn enable authorities to collect information on the registered individuals as well as their “close relations.” That was a greater point of rupture, and comparisons with Russia became frequent in Brussels and Tbilisi. 

Talking to the Spanish Socialist MEP Nacho Sanchez Amor, a member of the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association, it is clear that the S&D is in the process of re-evaluating its relationship with GD. However, the Spanish MEP was extremely careful to “stick to facts,” refusing to endorse the notion that GD is leaning towards Moscow. Be that as it may, sources both in Brussels and in Tbilisi suggest that GD essentially took a pre-emptive step on May 4, walking out of the social democratic relationship before being shown the exit. 

Georgia’s Feudalistic Pluralism and the Quest for “Divine Grace”     

When discussing Georgian politics, the elephant in the room is the role of the billionaire and political mega-donor Bidzina Ivanishvili, the nemesis of the self-styled pro-Western strongman Mikheil Saakashvili. BI or “Bidzina” prefers to be a king-maker rather than a king in Georgia’s pluralistic feudalism, a political system devoid of ideological struggle in which politicians strive to secure the throne by the grace of local “institutional investors” and their instrumentality in the messianic contest between East and West. The consensus is pro-business and pro-Western. 

It is an old truism that oligarchs in the post-Soviet space come into politics first and foremost to protect themselves. For those who did not fall in line with Misha’s demand for political and economic control, there were clear consequences. The assassination of Sandro Girgvliani,       a banker who dared to challenge a high-ranking Interior Ministry official, appeared to have political endorsement, emanating a Putin-like stronghold over the country. In this context, defiant oligarchic interests viewed politicians as guns for hire in a “Game of Thrones” with little ideological baggage. When Ivanishvili founded the Georgian Dream as an anti-UNM platform, he drew support from liberals, monarchists, conservatives, and left-of-centre critics of the self-styled strongman of the West. 

Misha’s appalling human rights appear less relevant a decade later, as his family protests his arrest, but it should be recalled that the scandal that tipped the scale and ensured the UNM lost the 2012 elections was the leak of videos unveiling a gruesome reality of arbitrary arrests, torture, and rape in Georgian prisons. Of course, disseminating these videos in Georgia and the West required considerable resources; this reality would have very little political effect without investment in communication. Misha lost power when he was seen as a moral liability to his European and American allies. 

One of the “grey guerrillas” of Georgian politics, Ambassador Tedo Jeopardize, likens Georgian politics to Kabuki theatre: a highly expressive performance ultimately founded on pre-set and time-enduring plots: East versus West and the messianic prophet versus the Devil incarnate. 

All of this is not unique to Georgia. The rupture with the social democrats and the outreach to European and American conservatives have been hailed by some GD supporters in Georgia, such as David Lee, a naturalised Georgian of British descent and CEO of a major telecommunications company in Georgia. For better or worse, culture wars in Georgia are as common as they are in the UK, the EU, and the US. 

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

More systematic reflections on the state of politics in Georgia speak of a democratic dead end and an imperial one-way road. Rather than  pluralis majestatis “We,” political leaders in Tbilisi refer to themselves as “Georgia.” When someone speaks for Georgia as the sponsor-in-chief of the ruling party, not an eyebrow is raised. 

The former Georgian Ambassador to the EU for eight consecutive years, Natalie Sabanadze, tells me that Georgia is entrapped in a perpetual state of unipolarity. “Governments in Georgia do not lose elections; rather, they are ousted. Saakashvili used international support to oust Shevardnadze; he then used all the resources of the state to hold on to power; he was then ousted by someone who had personal wealth that could match the resources of the state. And on it goes.” 

One of the members of the movement that deposed Saakashvili in 2012, Tina Khidasheli, told me in no uncertain terms that she does not buy into the conspiracy theory that the GD government has “a Kremlin handler.” However, she does think that the government pre     emptively hits economic interests that could develop into a political challenge, undermining the substance of political competition.

Allegations of justice being instrumentalised for political reasons are common. The Director of the House of Justice, Eka Beselia, a think tank devoted to capacity-building in the justice system, tells me that you do not have to be a jurist to predict the outcome of a trial of political significance. A local correspondent who used to work for an international news agency tells me that “media pluralism” in the sense of ownership and editorial policy exists, but journalism standards have nothing to do with balanced coverage. 

Parties and media assets are part of political “holding duchies.” The activist and campaigner Ana Dolidze has been calling for “de-Cartuification” of Georgian politics, or the tendency of the ruling party and government to be staffed by former Cartu bank employees, which is the flagship asset of Mr Ivanishvili’s corporate empire. 

As of recent, the GD holding has created “a subsidiary,” a party known as “People’s Power,” whose voting record is completely aligned with the origin party but one that can rhetorically deviate from political correctness with plausible deniability for the government. Theirs was the inspiration for the Foreign Agents Law which GD voted for, endorsed, but did not own up to. 

The issue at hand is that in a culture where political parties are treated as assets, political attacks are nearly always personal. This creates a self-fulfilling prophesy: a campaign against a party is a conspiracy against an individual lord. This view is echoed by Lincoln Mitchell, a Columbia University professor with nearly two decades of engagement and experience in Georgian politics: “You see, the matter is personal; if Bidzina did not think that there is a conspiracy to restore the UNM to power, the need to win elections would be an altogether different matter.” This is a winner-take-all game because losing means personal retribution. 

The biggest opposition party, UNM, appears to be active as a one-man campaign group for former President Mikheil Saakashvili.      Most European politicians feel uneasy about a leading opposition politician being in jail. But this is not the first time that Saakashvili has put on a confrontational persona for campaigning purposes, a tactic he pursued both in Ukraine and in Georgia. Cry wolf one time too many, and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg may not be entirely convinced you are tortured. Be that as it may, Misha’s contacts and his ability to frame the meaning of events on the international stage are remarkable and probably unmatched in Georgia. 

In February 2023, the Moldovan president accused Tbilisi of torturing Saakashvili. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs compared Georgian authorities to the Soviet NKVD. On the eve of the European Parliament’s vote on a resolution calling for the liberation of former President Saakashvili, a Lithuanian liberal MEP (Renew) organised a reception in Brussels in solidarity with Russian, Belarussian, and Georgian political prisoners, straightforwardly framing Georgia as an authoritarian state and painting the GD government as a Kremlin asset. Iconic figures of the conservative movement were later enlisted in opinion-leading outlets to describe Tbilisi as little Minsk. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, fuelled this narrative, hinting that Georgia was really helpful. 

The pressure is palpable, but this picture is not convincing: the British Foreign Minister, James Cleverly, was recently praising Georgia for its support of Ukrainian refugees; EU Ambassador Pawel Herczinsky and US Ambassador Kelly Degnan dismiss allegations that Tbilisi is facilitating sanctions evasion. Western pollsters and political consultants with a deep understanding of the political landscape in Georgia tell me that the notion GD is a Kremlin asset is “entirely delusional.” Furthermore, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasburg ruled in May that there was no indication of torture or threat to Saakashvili’s life and, therefore, no need for his transfer to Warsaw as requested by the former President’s defence team.

What Is Political About This Game of Thrones?     

The international community is engaged as a legitimating resource in a country where every change in power is “revolutionary” or even of apocryphal significance. The messianic plot of an encounter between East and West predates the war in Ukraine but may have new resonance. It is probably tiring for the average Georgian voter. 

The latest International Republican Institute poll in Georgia affirms public consensus regarding the country’s commitment to a Euro-Atlantic trajectory. That is, in fact, a point of consensus. The same poll also suggests that 42% of Georgians feel political parties are out of touch with their voters’ needs and expectations. 

This “electoral availability” means any result is up for grabs. For the lords contesting the throne, there are two paths to victory: the first is gerrymandering, or choosing one’s electorate within first-past the post constituencies; but the country is moving towards proportional representation, and that appears less relevant. The second is to fuel polarities by going from a “winner takes all” to a “survival of the fittest” political system, starving the opposition of economic resources and international legitimacy. 

Both strategies require considerable resources, and international campaigning is more costly than resources spent domestically. Being shrewd with one’s investment, if social democracy cannot deliver, investors move on.