Georgia’s leading election watchdog rejects the ruling party’s foreign agents law and will “defend the will and rights of Georgian voters” in next month’s elections, says Nino Dolidze, the executive director of the Tbilisi-based International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED). 

“ISFED was created to support Georgia’s free and fair elections. Any money we’ve received from foreign donors has been for the development of Georgia’s democracy. We are not representing any other country’s interests. We will never call ourselves ‘agents’ – it’s against our dignity”, Dolidze told bne IntelliNews in an interview in the Georgian capital this week. 

In the run up to crucial elections which will determine Georgia’s future global allegiance, such an act of public disobedience could jeopardise ISFED’s role as election observer. However, Dolidze is determined the society will continue its work safeguarding the democratic process and advocating for real democracy in Georgia, and will resist pressure from the governing Georgian Dream party, which critics say is shifting Georgia away from the West and towards Russia. 

“We don’t tell voters which party to support, we just want to make sure that they are voting in free and fair elections. We think the watchdog role and challenging non-democratic steps are important,” Dolidze says.

ISFED is joining the majority of Georgia’s non-governmental and media organisations in a boycott of the “law on the transparency of foreign influence”, passed in May this year. Both critics abroad and the Georgian political opposition have spoken out against the legislation – dubbed the ‘Russian law’ – which they say aims to stigmatise organisations, stifle voices critical of the government and stir up anti-Western propaganda. 

The controversial law requires all Georgian NGOs that  receive at least 20% of their funding from abroad to publish voluminous details of their assets in an online portal by September 2^nd, a deadline which has now passed. Organisations that failed to comply are now subject to fines of GEL25,000 ($9,200) and will be forcibly registered by the government.

The “transparency of foreign influence” law has been compared to similar legislation passed in Russia in 2012, which has been used since to systematically eradicate all free and independent media.

Dolidze says the Georgian law serves to discredit, stigmatise and whip up distrust of those organisations that are internationally funded, albeit that that money is spent doing work inside Georgia, and, in the case of ISFED, preserving democracy and protecting voters’ voices. 

Red Herring

Georgian Dream insists that a law on transparency is essential against a backdrop of alleged heavy interference by foreign powers in Georgian politics. Tbilisi Mayor and party secretary general Kakha Kalazde recently commented on many NGOs’ “transformation into political entities funded from abroad”, signalling the ruling party’s wider suspicion of a so-called ‘Global War Party’ which backs Georgia’s radical pro-Western opposition and wants to involve Georgia in the Ukraine war, a fantasy promoted by the party’s founder,  Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia. 

Dolidze, like Georgia’s pro-Western opposition, argues that concern over honesty and openness surrounding NGOs funding is a convenient red herring Georgian Dream is using to distract from the foreign agent law’s true intentions.

“The organisations being targeted have details of their finances on their website. We [ISFED] have always been transparent about our money”, she says. 

The law’s true aim, Dolidze says, is to pose an existential threat to NGOs, as the fines the government can issue to those organisations unwilling to register as foreign agents are so high that “you can’t really pay and exist at the same time”. “We don’t know how far the government might go”, the ISFED director adds. 

As part of their public rejection of the law, ISFED refuses to register themselves with the government’s online database of organisations that suggests they are “serving the interests of a foreign power”. 

Such invasive legislation not only represents a violation of privacy and basic human rights but also a breach of Article 78 of Georgia’s constitution, Dolidze explains. This states that all the country’s state institutions should follow a pro-Western trajectory, yet Brussels has warned that the current authoritarian course of the government blocks Georgia’s path to EU membership. 

With its operations almost entirely funded from overseas, primarily by democracy-supporting foundations such as USAID, NED and SIDA, ISFED is one among nearly 30,000 independent media and civil society organisations in Georgia that have been targeted by the foreign agent law. 

“The government have always targeted civil society organisations, especially ISFED, and now they’ve created this law as an instrument to silence free voices in Georgia. This is just one component to discredit and attack civil society organisations. We will not let it happen. We will fight for freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” Dolidze says.

As one of Georgia’s oldest and largest civil societies, ISFED finds itself repeatedly in the ruling party’s line of fire. But such a reputation has pushed them to “take the lead”, Dolidze says, both in renouncing the foreign agent law and in fighting the legal battle against it. Whilst they may be front runners, she continued, the courage and integrity of smaller organisations should not be underestimated. “We are all together in this fight at the same level”, Dolidze says.

'Traitor to the nation'

121 organisations have joined ISFED, Georgian President Zourabichvili, and members of the parliamentary opposition in appealing to Georgia’s Constitutional Court to challenge the law on the ‘transparency of foreign influence’. Dolidze explained they are now awaiting a decision, which they hope will be reached autonomously, although it could very well be politically influenced, as is not uncommon in Georgia. 

“If they [the Constitutional Court] want to make an independent decision then they have more than enough evidence, first, to mitigate the immediate effects of the law as an interim measure, and then, following discussion, to abolish it entirely”. 

Disobeying the ruling party comes with personal risks. During the demonstrations of April and May before the law was passed, Dolidze says she and other protesters were verbally attacked and harassed in text messages. She was not physically harmed, while others were, but Georgian Dream representatives defaced her front door with graffiti declaring her a “traitor to the nation”.

“We do not exclude anything now because we have seen the face of this government during rallies”, Dolidze said. 

Indeed, with the election stakes so high, the pre-voting environment is set to grow ever more febrile in the coming weeks, with the ruling party working to “control the free will of voters, especially in the regions and especially among public sector workers who are scared to lose their jobs”, explains the ISFED director.

With full control over state institutions and a monopoly on administrative resources, the ruling party is implementing “big social and infrastructural programmes to steal the hearts of voters”, while other parties don’t get the same opportunities, Dolidze says.

ISFED’s goals in the run up to and during the elections aim to counter this far from balanced political environment. “Firstly, each and every vote matters”, says Dolidze, explaining that voter education and high voter turnout is the most effective way to combat election manipulation, which may occur from any side. 

Of equal importance is protection of the votes themselves, but not necessarily defence of voters’ choices. “To be professional we have to observe these elections objectively”, she says, “we will flag any manipulation or violation from both the ruling party and the opposition, no matter what”.

ISFED will no doubt face further challenges to its work and its existence off the back of the “foreign agent law”, both before, during, and – should Georgian Dream win a fourth term – after the elections. 

Dolidze explains that ISFED was recently accredited by the central election commission to observe the voting in October, as is practice before elections in Georgia. “The Russian law does not have a direct relationship to the commission, which is good”, she says, but added “we don’t know what might happen”. 

A decision by Georgian Dream to impede ISFED’s monitoring work, which, Dolidze explains, could take the form of freezing their accounts and assets or of preventing them observing voting in some way, would signal an attempt by the ruling party to subvert the course of democracy, and show the law on transparency of foreign influence to be a tool of sabotage, discreditation and manipulation.

“Since 1995 ISFED has been one of the main election watchdogs and we always had a say in how elections were conducted,” Dolidze says. If the ruling party were to overrule ISFED’s agency in the voting process next months, this would mark a “big political message from the government which would undermine the legitimacy and fairness of these elections”, she says.