The battle lines are drawn for Georgia’s parliamentary elections on October 26 and the choices are clear. But one question remains unanswered: will the contest be fair? 

International observers are starting to fan out across the country, joining hundreds of their Georgian counterparts in preparing for the monumental task of monitoring the voting and evaluating the integrity of the results. 

For Georgians, the monitoring efforts underscore a need for these crucial elections to be deemed free and fair. Given the level of polarization among voters, acceptance of the outcome will depend to a great extent on perceptions about the fairness of the electoral process. 

Raising the stakes, both sides have attempted to foster an air of inevitability about the elections. The incumbent Georgian Dream party has waved away any notion that it will lose despite presiding over an unpopular breakup with the European Union this year. The opposition, while fragmented, believes it can capitalize on Georgians’ frustration to dethrone a government it says exhibits authoritarian tendencies. 

Polling has only muddled the situation. Opinion polls commissioned by sources sympathetic to the government put support for the party at nearly 60 percent; another study commissioned by an opposition TV station found only 30 percent of Georgians would vote for the incumbents. 

Whatever the truth may be, the presence of so many observers assures that any attempt by Georgian Dream to illegitimately engineer victory, as some in Tbilisi believe may happen, will not go undetected. 

Georgian election monitors have already been at work for months, strategizing to send teams of observers to polls to monitor the process and record possible irregularities. At the invitation of Georgian authorities, the OSCE opened an election observation mission on September 12 consisting of 30 long-term observers and hundreds of short-term observers. 

A monitoring initiative undertaken by a Tbilisi-based non-governmental organization, the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), has already reported on instances of political violence and intimidation during the campaign. In one recent instance, the co-chair of the Ahali political party, Nika Melia, was attacked by a Georgian Dream supporter during a meeting with journalists on August 11. 

Another report detailed allegations of an illegal voter repression scheme in the city of Rustavi in October. According to private broadcaster Mtvari TV, Georgian Dream officials seized the IDs of local individuals potentially preventing them from voting, a tactic which has been noted across the country. 

Such incidents paint a vivid picture of Georgia’s hyper-politicized, volatile political environment on the eve of elections. 

For people like Levan Natroshvili, deputy executive director for the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), these cases of violence and intimidation are nothing new. ISFED has worked in the election monitoring space since 1995; the pattern of violations he has seen emerge in recent years is relatively predictable. 

“We don’t see any significant differences” in comparison with other recent elections, he said. “Starting in 2018, I would say, the ruling party has been building this infrastructure for having a result in elections which is more favorable for it by using various kinds of administrative resources.” 

It’s perhaps this infrastructure that gives Georgian Dream the unshaken confidence to dismiss claims of electoral irregularities. “Manipulation is impossible,” said Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on October 18. “It’s concerning when this continues to be a topic of conversation despite all these conditions.” 

Roughly two weeks before Kobakhidze’s remarks, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) released a statement recognizing “alarming reports” that the ruling party was planning to steal the elections. A spokesperson for Georgian Dream declined to elaborate on Kobakhidze’s remarks or comment on PACE’s statement. 

This year, ISFED is employing 1,400 short-term election observers across the country. They will work in parallel to hundreds more from the other major Georgian monitoring groups, namely GYLA and Transparency International. 

On election day, ISFED observers will be stationed at polling locations, verifying the results of so-called “summary protocols” – something that Natroshvili called “the most important verification mechanism in our hands.” Other organizations will enlist observers to evaluate the integrity of polling stations, including whether ballots can be cast in secret and if there appears to be individuals pressuring others in their votes. 

Natroshvili noted that these elections have brought an unprecedented amount of attention to Georgia, but that hasn’t made his job any easier. “The attention is higher, of course, for these elections, but I would not say that it can be [translated] into more observers,” he said. 

He believes this is mostly due to the controversial “foreign agents“ law – passed earlier this year – which made the work of all election monitors harder. It has led to recruitment issues, for one, by stigmatizing the work of NGOs. Natroshvili said that ISFED has found it especially challenging to find people in rural areas to monitor the elections, for instance. 

Specifically, Natroshvili mentioned the Samtskhe-Javakheti and Kvemo Kartli regions – which have high numbers of ethnic Armenians and Azeris, respectively – as areas where there have been recruitment issues. 

“These regions are more vulnerable to intimidation, pressure, and all kinds of leverage that are used by the government,” he said. 

In addition to experiencing recruitment issues, election monitors have also been subject to various forms of harassment.

The most high-profile example occurred September 24, when Georgia’s Anti-Corruption Bureau imposed restrictions on Transparency International for supposedly being “actively engaged” in election campaigning. 

Razhden Kuprashvili, head of the bureau, alleged that Transparency International tried to “garner support for specific political parties while simultaneously urging voters to abstain from supporting another party.” 

What followed was a dramatic public feud. Transparency International, which did not respond to an interview request from Eurasianet, denied the allegations in a statement posted to Facebook, calling them a directed attack. PACE said that the move was “unacceptable and undermines public trust in the democratic nature of the electoral process.” It looked like Georgia’s elections might go on without Transparency International’s involvement in monitoring. But then Georgian Dream did something it rarely does: it pulled back. 

A surprising figure stepped in to make the announcement. In a public statement on October 1, Prime Minister Kobakhidze – the standard bearer of Georgian Dream’s combative, unapologetic brand of politics – urged the anti-corruption bureau to reverse its decision. “For the interests of the state and … to avoid external manipulation in the election process,” the Anti-Corruption Bureau should remove its restrictive designation on Transparency International, he said. 

The bureau heeded Kobakhidze’s call, and a few days later Transparency International announced that the restrictions had been lifted and it was free to resume election monitoring.

It was one example of the challenges facing Georgia’s election monitors, but the biggest test – assessing the impact of potential irregularities – is yet to come. 

The OSCE mission, led by former Irish MP Eoghan Murphy, is scheduled to release its first impressions on the day after elections. In combination with reports from Georgian monitors, this will give an initial sense of whether significant violations occurred. The mission will then compile a final report with its findings and recommendations to be released at an unspecified later date. 

If there are alleged violations, the next step is to file complaints in court. “After the election cycle ends, we basically continue our work [through] advocacy,” Natroshvili said. “That’s the next step. Based on the information, experience, and findings we had during the whole election cycle, we try to advocate for change.” 

But by that point it might be too late to prevent a major dispute over who won. 

Researchers from the Georgian Institute of Politics, a Tbilisi-based think tank, predict one of two scenarios will play out. In the first, Georgian Dream holds onto power despite electoral irregularities. The country is plunged into a political crisis, but, ultimately, the party consolidates its power and moves toward a Belarus-style model of oligarchic rule. 

In this scenario, the verification of mass electoral fraud could light a political fuse, producing a situation mirroring earlier this year when Georgia saw some of the biggest protests in recent memory mounted in opposition to the adoption of the “foreign agents” law. 

“If there are irregularities to the extent that the international community says that the ballot was clearly rigged, then there could be, of course, protests and mass demonstrations,” said Bidzina Lebanidze, a senior analyst at the institute. “The question is if the opposition can mobilize enough people to make the government uncomfortable.” 

In another outcome scenario, opposition parties win enough votes to form a majority coalition. They would likely roll back Georgian Dream policies starting with the “foreign agents” law, ultimately resetting relations with the West and reestablishing the country’s so-called Euro-Atlantic trajectory. Tensions would likely rise with Russia, which could use “hybrid warfare” tactics to destabilize the country by targeting Georgian society and leveraging the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 

At this stage both outcomes seem possible, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty as Georgians prepare to vote on Saturday. Attempting to quell those worries at a pre-election march on October 20, opposition-aligned President Salome Zourabichvili assured onlookers that the opposition can still win, even against towering odds. 

“When we enter Europe, we will be a partner and ally beyond your dreams,” she said to the crowd. “Georgia is already a winner here, and our future is victorious.”