In the winding streets of old Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, one has the feeling of being permanently under his watchful eye. From a glass mansion atop a hill, which critics compare to the lair of a James Bond villain, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest and most influential man in the country, has guided the process for more than a decade. of distancing the Caucasian country from the West.
With his party’s latest victory in last Saturday’s crucial parliamentary elections, that trajectory looks set to continue in the years to come. Opposition parties have already warned of the danger of Ivanishvili dismantling Georgia’s fragile three-decade experiment with democracy, while blocking any viable process towards EU integration.
Since his brief tenure as prime minister between 2012 and 2013, the secretive oligarch, whose wealth is estimated at $7.5 billion in a country with a GDP of $30 billion, has largely exerted his influence behind the scenes and has been widely appreciated by many Georgians. They describe him as the “puppeteer” of the country.
On Saturday night, Ivanishvili smiled in public at his party headquarters when the country’s electoral commission announced that the ruling Georgian Dream (SG) party he founded had won 54% of the vote, a result that It will ensure him power for another four years.
After the oligarch’s speech, fireworks lit up the sky and their loud booms echoed throughout the city, reflecting the desperation of an opposition whose hopes of forming a pro-Western coalition had vanished.
Ivanishvili spent much of the 1990s in Russia, where he founded banking, metals, real estate and telecommunications companies and became rich in the chaotic period after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
When he returned to Georgia and entered politics, he chose to cultivate an air of mystery. His extravagant hobbies, which included raising sharks and zebras and collecting rare trees, captured the public’s attention, and stories about his lavish hobbies became popular anecdotes throughout the country. “I could tell you anything I wanted and you couldn’t prove if it was true or false,” he once said in an unusual interview.
Transphobic and illiberal rhetoric
Ivanishvili took on a more visible role in the run-up to Saturday’s elections, which were seen as a decisive vote that could determine whether Georgia shifts away from its trend toward the West and strengthens its ties with the Kremlin.
The oligarch’s public reappearance coincided with a sharp escalation of his party’s anti-liberal and anti-Western discourse. In a recent interview, loaded with transphobic and homophobic rhetoric reminiscent of far-right forums on the Internet, Ivanishvili described Georgia as a country immersed in a cultural struggle against the West, which he accused of trying to impose corrosive values on the country. . He claimed that in Europe, parents pressure children to undergo reassignment surgeries, and that “man’s milk” for babies is considered “the same as women’s milk.”
Ivanishvili advised those who doubted his claims to watch footage of a Pride event in Barcelona, claiming it included young children and “all kinds of orgies.”
He has also framed his party’s election campaign around accusations that the West, along with the country’s opposition, was trying to drag Georgia into a conflict like Ukraine, a powerful message in a country where many have feared war with Russia since. Putin’s troops briefly invaded the country in August 2008.
Ivanishvili’s detractors and those who worked with him in the past warn that behind his bombastic rhetoric lies a real danger. In this sense, they point to their promises to ban the main opposition parties and dismiss opposition legislators after the elections, calling them “criminals” and “traitors.”
“It’s very simple, Ivanishvili keeps his promises. He has promised to outlaw and imprison his opponents and I have no reason to doubt that he will try to do so,” says Tina Khidasheli, who was defense minister in an SG-led government between 2015 and 2016 and has since become a critic of Ivanishvili.
As the oligarch’s rhetoric has hardened, so has his paranoia. If he previously felt comfortable among large crowds, Ivanishvili now moves around with a large security cordon and delivers his speeches behind armored glass.
“For Ivanishvili, staying in power is an existential question of survival,” says Kornely Kakachia, director of the Georgian Institute of Politics: “He believes that if he loses, his adversaries will go not only for his political power, but also for his empire.” business”.
A puppet of the Kremlin?
Opposition parties have long accused Ivanishvili of loyalty to Moscow, pointing to the Russian origin of his wealth.
Under his leadership, Georgia enacted a “foreign agents” law targeting Western-funded NGOs, as well as legislation against the LGBTI community. Both measures have notable similarities with the laws approved by the Kremlin years before.
However, some experienced analysts have warned against oversimplifying the narrative that sees him as a mere puppet of Putin. “It is appeasing Russia, but I see no reason to suggest that it is controlled or due to Russia, and that is an important distinction,” says Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and an expert on the region.
By contrast, de Waal claims that Ivanishvili’s tactics resemble those of Viktor Orbán, the divisive Hungarian leader. De Waal notes that Orbán and Ivinishavili have focused their campaigns on conservative “Christian” values, while calling for “peace” in Ukraine without condemning Russia. In fact, it is telling that Orbán was the first foreign leader to congratulate Georgian Dream on “its landslide victory,” hours before the official results were announced.
What’s coming is uncertain
For now, Georgia’s immediate future remains uncertain. On Sunday morning, the opposition refused to concede defeat, accusing the ruling party of staging a “constitutional coup” and calling for protests. This sets the stage for a possible political crisis in a country with a history of mass unrest.
There is no doubt that Ivanishvili has taken advantage of his seemingly limitless financial power to influence the elections, which have been marred by accusations of irregularities, including allegations of vote coercion of state officials and cases of vote buying.
Still, the result suggests that Ivanishvili’s messages resonate with a core of voters, especially in the industrial heartland and in the poorest, most conservative regions, where economic progress has been slow and the lure of being part of Europe seems distant. and weak.
“It is tempting for the opposition to claim that Ivanishivli’s party does not have the support of the citizens, who have bought the elections,” says a Western source in Tbilisi: “But the reality is that, for now, Ivanishvili seems to have won the battle. ”.
Translation by Emma Reverter.
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