A little more than a year ago, diverse opposition coalitions fought for votes in Georgia’s parliament, with four of them winning seats. Today, all but one of their eight main leaders are in prison, in exile or facing criminal charges. The ruling party is seeking to ban the three main opposition groups altogether, writes "Reuters".
The move toward one-party rule has shocked many in the small South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia seemed like a thriving democracy, on the fast track to joining the EU and breaking out of Russia's orbit.
But it is now further from the West than at almost any other point in its post-Soviet history, according to a Brussels analysis that describes its democratic institutions as crippled and its courts as under state control.
This month, the European Union announced in a report that Georgia is now a candidate for membership "in name only." The EU ambassador to Tbilisi said Georgia was no longer on track to join the bloc.
Senior veterans of Georgian politics and diplomacy have noted that Georgia appears to be close to a line beyond which it will be difficult for democracy to recover.
"We are now five minutes away from a one-party dictatorship," warned Sergi Kapanadze, a former deputy foreign minister and deputy speaker of parliament until 2020.
"Democratization means that at some point you will lose power"
Natalie Sabanadze, Tbilisi's ambassador to the EU until 2021, said that during decades of often bitter internal political disputes, there had always been a political consensus that Georgia belonged to the West. Now that is lost.
"They know that the democratization that the EU demands means accepting that at some point you will lose power," she said of the ruling "Georgian Dream" party. "They don't want that. And they are essentially building a full-fledged authoritarian regime."
"Georgian Dream" claims to be protecting the country from opposition figures trying to seize power and ignite a catastrophic war with Russia.
It's a fear that became palpable after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which brought back memories among Georgians of Russian tanks rolling into the outskirts of Tbilisi in a humiliating defeat by Moscow in a short war in 2008.
"Georgia is an island of peace in a very difficult geopolitical region," said Nino Tsilassoni, a ruling party lawmaker and acting deputy speaker of parliament. "What investors and businesses need is stability".
She accused detained opposition politicians of trying to stage a coup, charges that opposition parties have dismissed as fabricated to justify the crackdown.
Critics have cast the billionaire founder of "Georgian Dream", Bidzina Ivanishvili, as the mastermind behind the authoritarian change. Some accuse him of being in league with Russia, where he made his fortune in the 1990s.
Giya Khukhashvili, who helped set up the party as Ivanishvili's chief political adviser before parting ways with him in 2013, said it was wrong to see his former boss as a subordinate of Moscow. Rather, Ivanishvili sees a simple "coincidence of interests" between the countries, he explained.
"He understands that in this ocean of sharks, he needs a big brother. Who is the big brother? "It can only be Russia," Khukhashvili summed up.
The economy has turned towards Russia and China
Located strategically on the Black Sea in a region crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines, Georgia could theoretically play an important role in the West's maneuver to diversify energy and trade routes away from Russia.
After emerging from ethnic conflict and economic collapse that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the country experienced rapid growth, fueled by investor-friendly policies that accompanied its political turn towards the West.
However, this openness has now quickly reversed, with foreign direct investment falling in the past two years to levels last seen in the early 2000s.
Growth has stalled, with the influx of Russian businesses and IT workers into Georgia since the start of the war in Ukraine has been a boon to the economy. The World Bank predicts that Georgia's GDP will grow by 7% this year, after 9.4% last year.
The construction of a deep-sea port on the Black Sea - a potential key transit hub linking Asia to Europe - has largely stalled, however, since a Western-led consortium was excluded from the project. A Chinese company has since won the contract, but progress on the port has been minimal.
Meanwhile, Georgia now imports about 45% of its oil from Russia, up from just 8% in 2012, even though Tbilisi and Moscow do not have diplomatic relations.
Ian Kelly, a former US ambassador to Georgia, believes the West could have done more to build ties with Tbilisi.
"We are failing", he reported. "Georgia has opened the doors to Russia and China".
Quick Chess
In recent weeks, "Georgian Dream" has taken a number of measures aimed at eradicating the remnants of political dissent.
An upcoming Constitutional Court case will ban the three main opposition parties, and new criminal charges against nine key opposition figures - including former President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is in prison - look set to keep all potential challengers behind bars for years.
Recently, the crackdown has targeted figures close to the ruling party itself, with criminal charges recently being brought against even senior ministers and former leading allies of the founder of "Georgian Dream" Ivanishvili.
The authorities are acting so quickly that Kapanadze, the former deputy prime minister, likened the situation to "rapid chess", with the opposition trying to prevent checkmate in the hope that the government will make tactical mistakes in its haste.
Arrests during nighttime anti-government protests outside parliament have left political activists in fear, despair and resignation. Dozens are languishing in prison or fined for blocking roads.
"Georgia has just disappeared not only from the European table, but also from the world stage," summed up Grigol Gegelia of the banned "Lelo" party. "We are losing our country."