Voters in Georgia Republic Are at a Crossroads: Russia or the West?

Voters in Georgia, a mountainous country at the strategic center of the Caucasus, are casting their ballots in a parliamentary election on Saturday that could derail the country’s decades-long pro-Western course and push it closer to Russia and China.The governing Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2012, seeks a supermajority.That way, the party has vowed, it could use the result to outlaw its main opponents, the United National Movement and its satellite groups.In turn, the opposition, which has been divided into four main political forces, aims to end Georgian Dream’s rule and to more concretely steer the country toward membership in the European Union and NATO.“The elections will decide whether Georgia will be democratic or authoritarian,” Giorgi Gakharia, a former prime minister and the leader of the For Georgia party, said in an interview.

“The elections will decide Georgia’s future course not for the next four years, but for the next decade.”The results will reverberate in the region and beyond.After more than three decades of being among the most pro-Western states to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia could join the expanding group of illiberal states that try to perform a balancing act between Russia and China, and the West.Western officials have been watching relations between Russia and the Georgian government with growing alarm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....