Georgia is voting in a referendum on EU membership ambitions Election News

Voting is underway in Georgia's parliamentary elections that could shape the future of the country's young democracy and its European ambitions.

Saturday's vote will see an unprecedented coalition of pro-Western opposition parties challenge the ruling Georgian Dream party, which has faced criticism for undermining democracy and distancing itself from Russia.

The European Union has warned that the election will reveal the country's chances of joining the twenty-seventh European Union. Polls suggest a majority of Georgians favor joining the EU, but accession talks were stalled after Georgian Dream passed a law curtailing freedom of expression in June.

Polls open at 8am (04:00 GMT) and will close 12 hours later, with around 3.5 million Georgians eligible to vote.

Opinion polls indicate that the opposition parties could get enough votes to form a coalition to replace Georgian Dream, which is controlled by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who founded the party and made his fortune in Russia.

“Tonight, there will be a victory for all of Georgia,” Western President Salome Zourabichvili, who is at odds with the ruling party, said after the vote.

Georgian Dream founder and former prime minister, Bidzina Ivanishvili, said the election was “an easy decision”.

“Either we choose a government that works for you, the people of Georgia … or we choose an agent of a foreign country that will only carry out the tasks of a foreign country,” he said while voting in the capital, Tbilisi, on Saturday. .

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said he hoped Georgian Dream would win a majority in the 150-seat parliament and called for “greater motivation” from supporters.

The spokesperson of the Central Election Commission, Natia Ioseliani, said that 9% of the people were candidates at 10am (06:00 GMT), two hours after voting started.

Georgians will elect 150 lawmakers from 18 parties. If no party wins the 76 seats needed to form a government for four years, the president will invite the largest party to form a coalition.

'He takes us back'

Many voters believe that the election could be the most important vote of their lifetime, deciding whether Georgia returns to the path of EU membership or accepts accession and dependence on Russia.

“The majority of Georgians have realized that the current government is taking us back to the Russian swamp and away from Europe, where Georgia really belongs,” 48-year-old singer Giorgi Kipshidze told AFP at a polling station in central Tbilisi.

In power since 2012, Georgian Dream initially pursued a liberal pro-Western policy agenda. But in the last two years, it has changed course.

Its campaign revolves around a conspiracy theory about a “global war clique” that controls Western institutions and wants to drag Georgia, reeling from Russia's 2008 invasion, into a war that only the Georgian Dream could prevent.

“Currently, some people do not understand the danger they may face if we lose. But we will try our best to win and show people the right way,” said Georgian Dream activist Sandro Dvalishvili told Reuters.

Georgia, which lost territory to Russian-backed separatists in the 1990s and was defeated in a brief Russian invasion in 2008, had for decades been one of the most pro-Western states to emerge from the Soviet Union. But since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Georgian Dream has steered the country squarely back in Moscow's orbit, accusing the West of trying to lure it into war.

Opposition parties and President Zourabichvili accuse Georgian Dream of buying votes and intimidating voters, which it denies.

Georgian Dream's adoption of a controversial “foreign influence” law this year targeting the public sparked weeks of street protests and was criticized as a move by the Kremlin to silence dissent.

Russia on Friday blasted “unprecedented attempts at Western interference” in the vote, accusing it of “trying to twist Georgia's hand” and “imposing goals”.