Georgia holds local elections on October 2 in a vote widely viewed as a referendum on the ruling Georgian Dream party in the highly polarized South Caucasus country.
The vote was already set to be contentious before exiled former President Mikheil Saakashvili returned on the eve of the election to rally the opposition and call for protests, only to be arrested within hours.
Saakashvili, who was convicted in absentia in 2018 and has lived in Ukraine in recent years, announced plans earlier this week to fly home for the vote, despite facing prison, claiming he wanted to help “save the country.”
The local elections come as the country has been in a protracted political crisis since Georgian Dream won parliamentary elections last October, in a vote opposition parties said was unfair and fraudulent. International observers said the vote had been competitive and that fundamental freedoms were generally been respected.
Under an EU-brokered agreement reached in April to diffuse the paralyzing political crisis between Georgian Dream and opposition parties, early parliamentary elections were to be called in 2022 if Georgian Dream received less than 43 percent in local elections
But in July, Georgian Dream leader Irakli Kobakhidze annulled the so-called April 19 agreement, blaming the opposition for its failure and claiming most other key provisions had been met.
At the time, Kobakhidze said that smaller opposition parties signed the agreement, but the larger “radical opposition” blocs including the main opposition United National Movement refused to join the deal.
Most of the opposition is framing the vote for 64 mayoral and municipal council races, including in the capital, Tbilisi, as a referendum on Georgian Dream to use as leverage to demand early elections if the ruling party fails to get more than 43 percent of the vote.
The arrest of Saakashvili, who founded United National Movement, is likely to spark upheaval in a country that has struggled for years with political instability.
In a video posted on Facebook before his arrest, Saakashvili, who was stripped of his Georgia citizenship, called on his supporters to vote for the United National Movement or smaller parties opposing Georgian Dream.
“Everyone must go to the polls and vote, and on October 3 we must fill Freedom Square (in central Tbilisi). If there are 100,000 people, no one can defeat us,” he posted in the video.
“You see — I risked everything — my life, freedom, everything, in order to come here. I want only one thing from you — go to the polls,” he said.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili — Saakashvili’s longtime foe — said in a statement on October 1 that she “will never pardon” the former president, accusing him of trying to destabilize the country.
In a video posted later, she warned of “spreading unrest” as she urged citizens to vote peacefully and avoid conflict.
“The time of civil conflict is over,” she said, adding that she stands with citizens “not in any street or square, but rather on the side of the constitutional order and peaceful future.”
Saakashvili has been a Ukrainian citizen since 2015 and heads the executive committee of Ukraine’s National Reform Council.
In recent years, he has held several top government positions in Ukraine, and was briefly the governor of the Odesa region.
In 2018, he was sentenced absentia to a total of nine years in prison after being found guilty of abusing his authority in two separate cases related to trying to cover up evidence related to the 2005 beating of an opposition lawmaker and about the killing of a Georgian banker.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Georgian Service, Civil.ge, AFP, and Reuters
