As Georgia heads to the polls, democracy and prosperity hang in the balance
Georgia has been one of the success stories in Eastern Europe after the Cold War.
It is now a vigorous, multi-party democracy where elections are fiercely fought but the electorate’s decision respected.
Sound economic policies have pushed Georgia near to the top of the World Bank’s league of the best places in the world in which to do business. Openness to international investors has attracted more than $19bn foreign direct investment to Georgia, with British companies among the biggest foreign investors.
In government, working with William Hague, I started the annual Wardrop Dialogue between our two countries. The UK’s values include at their heart a commitment to pluralism, democracy and the rule of law. We want to see newer democracies like Georgia thrive, becoming both more prosperous and politically stable.
And Georgia has stood by her fellow democracies, sending troops to support the allied mission in Afghanistan and backing the United Kingdom after Russia’s chemical weapons attack in Salisbury.
But we cannot simply assume that Georgia’s democratic and economic progress will continue. Russia still occupies Georgian territory in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and uses commercial and political leverage to try to shift Georgia’s pro-western stance. Within Georgia, the process of reform is not yet complete.
Georgian parliamentary elections are due tomorrow. In a recent report, the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), which has many years of experience in election monitoring, warned that while Georgia had proved “its technical capacity to conduct credible elections… persistent issues related to electoral integrity have remained unaddressed”, sapping public confidence in Georgian democracy and leaving the country more vulnerable to outside interference. Earlier this month 17 Georgian NGOs called for a formal investigation into alleged Russian subversion of the political process.
The International Society for Elections and Democracy (IFSED), based in Tblisi, has catalogued incidents of politically motivated violence, harassment and intimidation. New York’s Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned physical attacks on Georgian TV reporters and crews.
Georgian law is clear that state resources cannot be used for election campaign purposes and that in the 60 days before a scheduled election no action is allowed on any new government project or programme unless previously announced and provided for in the state’s budget. But too often these rules are ignored.
Two years ago, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) criticised the “increasing use of administrative resources to further smear the border between the party and the state”. Both NDI and IFSED have flagged concern that these abuses are happening in the current campaign.
There are also worrying signs of a shift in economic strategy that could put at risk Georgia’s attractiveness to international investment and its trajectory towards the Euro-Atlantic family of nations.
Earlier this year, the Georgian government was accused of working to undermine the Anaklia deep sea port development and the international consortium running the project “by dissuading potential project investors, lenders, contractors and suppliers from joining the project in order to kill it”.
More recently, the government used potentially unconstitutional amendments to its Communications Law to appoint a “special manager” to Caucasus Online, the country’s largest internet provider. This not only undermines foreign investment in the country but also limits Georgia’s potential as a “regional digital hub” and blocks the country’s involvement in the development of the Asia-Europe digital highway.
Many times when I was in government I was told by UK businesses that a key consideration in deciding whether or not to invest in a country was whether they were confident about the rule of law there. Would contracts be respected and disputes settled through a transparent and independent process? I fear interventions of this kind will deter the investment that Georgia needs to create jobs and raise incomes for its people.
In addition, the common feature of both projects is that they offered ways in which to develop new critical infrastructure (a deep water port and a fibre-optic cable link) that avoided having to cross Russian or Iranian territory. It seems strange that the Georgian authorities should have blocked progress.
Soon after becoming Prime Minister, Boris Johnson made clear his strong support for the United Kingdom’s strategic partnership with Georgia and for further progress on the country’s internal reforms. The Prime Minister was right. Georgia’s prosperity and the health of its democracy matter to the United Kingdom.
Like other friends of Georgia, I hope that in the days and weeks ahead we shall see Georgia’s leaders maintain and strengthen their commitment to their country’s democratic, European and Atlantic course.
Main image credit: Getty