Democracy and election.s rigging (episode 2)
Meeting the front-line fighters of disinformation and understanding what this election is about
Russian influence, election monitoring, election meddling, Foreign Interference, propaganda, disinformation, European policy, Transparency, democracy… In the world of OSINT and Disinformation, we are using all these words in every report, study, research, briefing or LinkedIn posts. But in Georgia, it was really happening, with real people, all of this and all at once. It would happen not on the internet, not on networks, not AI or Twitter, but on billboards in the streets, in physical polling stations, in a real parliament, in demonstrations.
So, we went to spend two weeks in Tbilisi, one before the elections, one after. This is a subjective view, in multi-episodes, of what I saw and understood.
This is a tale about European style democracy fighting Russian style authoritarianism in a small country at the crossroad of four continents.
Thanks, Eva Bauchau, for context, expertise, contacts and on-site support. Thanks, Claire Pershan, for re-reading
This is Episode 2, previous episode here
Elections or Election…?
It was never exactly clear in my head which one to use.
Yes, yes, I know, one election is singular, and electionS is plural. But let’s think of it, what is an election? Dropping one ballot in a ballot box is an election. So, millions of people with millions of hopes, millions of pasts and millions of futures dropping millions of ballots into thousands of ballot boxes means electionS. Election is about making one decision though, so if you only making one decision, let’s say choosing one president, it is an election with no S. But what about electing MPs, there are many of them so electionS. Yet again this is about one decision: getting Georgian Dream out of power. But Georgian Dream has all the powerS.
GeorgianS will, on the same ONE day, go in voting stationS dropping ballotS in ballot boxeS to make ONE choice between two different aspirationS for their ONE country: democracy with opposition coalitionS or single-party authoritarianism…
So, election or elections? Let’s leave it undecided…
I am chatting with the youth from the MDF after their press conference.
The Media Development Foundation had invited me last year for a conference about OSINT, and this is how I discovered Georgia.
I was happy and eager to meet them again, and they had invited me to the presentation of their “pre-election report”. Many civil society organisations were doing that, a pre-election report. It was a good way to call the media and European partners, and to warn the ruling party that civil society will be watching this election closely.
“We are afraid that they will rig the elections. If they only use legal rigging we are OK, but if they get 51%...”
And this is how I learned that the plan was to win democratically, against the rigging by the government. I ask if they have polls. “Polls show the opposition winning but…” But can anyone trust a poll in authoritarian country?
Tamar Kintsurashvili takes us with her in the taxi back to the MDF offices where we can do the interview. We feel a bit awkward to be offered the good seats, while the MDF crew squeezes in the back, to honour the legendary Georgian hospitality. We take the opportunity to start the conversation in the car.
“People are afraid to lose their jobs”. In a poor post-soviet country, many people depend on the state salary for their living. And the Georgian Dream controls the state salaries…
“It is also the 1st time we have an E-Vote, and they are scaring people with that”. Georgian Dream started rumours that one could know how people voted with the new machines.
We pass by the old MDF offices. They had to move because their offices were vandalised after they passed the new NGO law on foreign Agents, the infamous “Russian Law”. Tamar has a video of the attacks but police will not do anything. “But they were very nice when they came for the investigation”. Pro-regime media have their own live reporting video of the attacks. They even took the luxury of inviting journalists to report their wrongdoings.
“With the new legislation they started to scare us, not only with graffiti on the walls, but with the phone calls in the middle of the night. Phone calls to my family, my husband, my daughter…” They had people swear at them in the middle of the street, but those calls in the middle of the night were the most intimidating. “You can only think something bad happens”.
They were also targeted on social media. Tamar’s photo was used in propaganda images, accusing her of censuring Facebook posts. (As if anyone on this earth had the secret recipe of how to censor Facebook posts…)
The Georgian Dream and pro-Russia affiliated media were also starting to release “hypothetical scenarios”, depicting the outcome: Georgian Dream winning the election, and the West with its devil hands trying to start revolution in the country through massive demonstration.
MDF and other opposition leaders had held a private meeting in a hotel belonging to a pro-Russian oligarch. “In no less than ten minutes, our meeting was live on pro-government websites.” she says.
“I even received an e-mail from a Georgian Dream executive, he was using his own e-mail so I identified him, he was threatening to rape all of us.” She says this as though it is normal, with no fear in her voice. “I filed a complaint but nothing happened”, normal again…
While we drive, we regularly see graffiti in the streets saying “no to Ruzzian law”. Tamar explains us how the “Ruzzian law”, the law against foreign agents NGOs goes hand in hand with the ‘family unity’ law, “the law against ‘gay propaganda’”.
“For the first time, this election is very unpredictable. It is difficult to rely on polls in Georgia, polling institutes are themselves the target of propaganda.”
Almost everybody we talk to situates the Georgian Dream reasonably somewhere around 36% (without rigging). “They still have the support of segments of the population. Haters of the previous government, some government workers…”
Facing off against them are 4 different alternative coalitions, but these have trouble to unite.
“They call us “liberal fascists”. We were just about to pay tribute to the clever Georgian Dream propaganda catchphrase, but a member of the MDF in the back reminds us that this clever catchphrase actually comes from US conservatives. Georgian Dream did not invent anything.
Their strategy was still innovative. Georgian Dream, to avoid being too openly affiliated with Russia in a country where all walls of the capital city are painted with “Russia out” slogans, had devised a bypass: recycle western pro-Russian slogans! US conservatives and Viktor Orban had plenty of those in stock. With that technique, they could be pro-US, pro-Europe and pro-Russia altogether.
“This election is decisive for the future of the country. It is the first time the ruling party is targeting our western partners.” In 2012, Georgian Dream came into power with one particular slogan: “Georgia should not be the subject of the divide between the West and Russia”.
“We should have paid more attention to that one” says Tamar. Their platform was to not mention Russia to avoid provoking Russia. “It created a gap that was quickly filled by pro-Russians.”
Oh and you know how Georgia is at the confluence of four continents? Well, they played that too. “Muslim Turkey versus Orthodox Russia”. To avoid having to face the Russia versus EU debate, let’s do an equivalent with Muslims and Russian Orthodox instead. “They flooded us by abusing administrative resources and government propaganda.”
They are not anti-EU, they are just asking to not mention Russia. “They played a double game”.
It worked. “In Germany, for instance, they truly believed Georgian Dream was pro-Western.”
It all comes from Orban’s playbook. “A copy-pasty of the Orban’s Model”.
Orban is EU, right? Nothing “foreign” there, the Orban Model has the EU label.
“They say we want to enter the EU but ‘with dignity’. They are also defending ‘sovereignty’ and place themselves as defending a ‘sovereign democracy’ in the face of ‘liberal democracy’”. “They say integration (to the EU) should not happen ‘at any cost’.”
And of course, a good old “neither - nor” propaganda: “Neither Brussels nor Moscow”.
They also play with the idea of the “division of the West”.
“They say they are not the perverted West”.
They prefer to take inspiration from another kind of Western rhetoric, like Tucker Carlson. “Being pro-Russian is not trendy, but if you launder Western pro-Russian propaganda, it is another story”.
In 2022, Georgia failed to immediately receive EU membership candidacy status and instead received 12 priorities to address. At that moment, the “second front” propaganda came in handy. “They said it was a punishment for not opening the second front”.
“And then they invented false statistics to show how the Georgian economy was doing fine. Even better than some EU members…”
“So, how do you resist?” I ask
“With transparency! They want to silence us, so we will speak louder”.
MDF, alongside other NGOs, refused to register themselves as “foreign agents”, also in an effort to protest against the new law.
Before they were just launching investigations against NGOs without acting on them, but now the repression has reached a new level. So they try to fight back.
“After the 2nd vandalism, and the police doing nothing, we reached out to the Young Lawyer association that helps advocacy groups.” Together they tried to file their complaints to higher courts in the EU. “They are not enforcing legislation yet but they promised to enforce it after the elections.” (We will have the chance to meet later in this journey with the incredible GYLA, Georgian Young Lawyer Association)
For the MDF this summer was “the summer of hell”. They had to fight back against old complaints from antivax haters, but also state repression, and vandalism from Georgia Dream goons. This summer the authoritarian slip of Georgian Dream really accelerated. They passed the NGO law, the LGBTQ law and increased the repression of civil society.
“It is about Ivanishvili, he plays for his political survival”.
(Bidzina Ivanishvili. I like to call him “the honorary leader of Georgia”. Founder of Georgian Dream, de facto ruler of the country, and with one fourth of the country GDP in his own pocket. While Tamar tells me “it’s about his survival” I can’t help but think of another autocrat, a little down on the map in the Middle East, setting the whole region on fire, wars and death only to save his political career…).
“He is also starting a new relationship with China”. Who needs Europe, right?
The future writes maybes.
“Propaganda against a revolution has already started”, paving the way for repression in case of demonstrations against the ruling regime after the elections.
“If they lose ,they will probably try to bribe the opposition.” My bet is on the MP’s belonging to parties running on a “neither Georgian Dream nor the opposition” platform.
“They released their own polls showing 60% win for the ruling party.” The best way to cast the unreliability spell on all polls is simply to release your own fake polls. It also gives a good idea of what numbers they aim to achieve.
The craziest of all: “they were winning before the Russian law…”
“legislation is harming them, they were winning the elections, it is only harming them so nobody knows why they insist on passing this law.” Direct order from Russia? Or it comes from Ivanishvili's Paranoid and megalomaniac obsessions? Were they so intoxicated by their own propaganda that they were really afraid of losing without an authoritarian grip? One can only guess.
“Many young people are simply disgusted from the situation, and they just leave, but this is no solution.”
I ask about the demonstrations. Of course she goes. “As a journalist and fact checker, I should be neutral, but there is no other choice.” She is amazed by the amount of young people protesting and by their determination. And Ivanishvili is clearly afraid of them. “He is against Gen Z, he’s started to attack the universities.”
The big unknown remains for the October 26. It is the first of many things. The first time they will use voting machines for instance. “Before, both sides were counting their votes and both claiming victory.” I ask if she trusts the voting machines, but get no clear answer. “One one hand it is important technological progress…” but she does not finish her sentence. It can clearly be used by the ruling power to manipulate the votes…
Put your wishes in a big black box and hope for change… In any election, whatever the system used, it comes to that. Send your wishes into a big black box and hope for change. The way it is counted, or even the wishes themselves are not that important. The only thing is that the ruling regime has to relinquish power peacefully and accept to lose.
Georgian Dream already called for a big demonstration to celebrate its victory on the 26th, on the exact street usually walked by opposition demonstrations.
After an hour of the interview, we join Sopo, a small yet super badass girl who has a daughter, two dogs, drives a motorbike, and after the dozen of Khinkali that we just ate, will go do crossfit. “Carbs give me great energy for the training after”. She also works against disinformation and knows the best hipster coworking spots in Tbilissi. Strange places where, behind decrepit façades, you can find mazes of inside courtyards with restaurants and co-working spaces.
