A little over a year ago, a diverse group of opposition coalitions were competing for votes in Georgia’s parliament, with four of them winning seats. Of their eight leading leaders, all but one are now in prison, exile or facing criminal charges.
The ruling party aims to ban three major opposition parties outright.
The move to one-party rule has shocked many in the small South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people. In the years after the collapse of the USSR, Georgia seemed like a thriving democracy, on its way to joining the EU and breaking out of Russia's orbit.
But now it is further from the West than at any time in its post-Soviet history, according to an assessment from Brussels that describes its democratic institutions as paralyzed and its courts – as state-controlled.
This month, the EU said in a report that Georgia was now a candidate for membership "only on paper."
The EU ambassador in Tbilisi said Georgia was no longer on track to join the bloc at all.
Leading Georgian political and diplomatic figures with years of experience who spoke to Reuters about the events of the past few months said Georgia appeared to be close to a point beyond which it would be difficult to restore democracy.
"We are now five minutes away from a one-party dictatorship," said 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, who represented Tbilisi in the EU until 2021, said that in During decades of often bitter internal political disputes, there was always a political consensus that Georgia belonged in the West. Now that consensus has been 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 in fact they are building a completely authoritarian regime."
"Georgian Dream" claims to be protecting the country from opposition figures who are trying to seize power and provoke a catastrophic war with Russia.
These are concerns that became palpable after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which brought back memories for Georgians of Russian tanks rolling into the outskirts of Tbilisi during the humiliating defeat by Moscow in the short war in 2008.
"Georgia is an island of peace in a very complex geopolitical region," said Nino Tsilassoni, a ruling party lawmaker and deputy speaker of parliament. "Investors and businesses need stability."
She accused jailed opposition politicians of trying to stage a coup, charges that opposition parties have dismissed as fabricated to justify the crackdown.
The opposition has identified billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, founder of the "Georgian Dream" party, as the architect of the authoritarian turn. 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 view his former boss as a subordinate of Moscow. Rather, Ivanishvili simply sees a "coincidence of interests" on both sides, he said.
"He understands that in this ocean of sharks he needs a big brother. And who is the big brother? "It can only be Russia," Khukhashvili said.
The economy is turning to Russia and China
Strategically located on the Black Sea in a region crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines, Georgia could theoretically play an important role in the West's plan to diversify energy and trade routes away from Russia.
After recovering from ethnic conflict and economic collapse with the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, Georgia experienced rapid growth, fueled by a pro-investor policy that shaped its political orientation toward the West.
That openness is now rapidly changing, with foreign direct investment falling to levels last seen at the beginning of the new century in the past two years.
Economic growth is continuing, with the influx of Russian IT firms to Georgia since the war in Ukraine proving to be a boon to the economy. The World Bank predicts that Georgia's GDP will grow by 7% this year, down from 9.4% last year.
But construction of a deep-sea port terminal on the Black Sea - a potential key transit hub linking Asia to Europe - has largely stalled after a consortium led by Western firms was excluded from the project. A Chinese company later won the contract, but progress on the port has been minimal.
Meanwhile, Georgia imports about 45% of its oil from Russia, a sharp increase from 8% in 2012, and that's despite Tbilisi and Moscow not having diplomatic relations.
Ian Kelly, a former US ambassador to Georgia, said the West could have done more to build ties with Tbilisi.
"We are failing," he said. "Georgia has opened its doors to Russia and China."
A party of accelerated chess
In recent weeks, "Georgian Dream" has taken a series of measures that appear aimed at eradicating the last vestiges of political dissent.
A pending 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 potential challengers behind bars for years.
Recently, the crackdown has targeted figures close to the ruling party itself, with criminal charges recently filed against even senior ministers and former allies of the founder of "Georgian Dream" Ivanishvili.
The authorities are acting so quickly that former Deputy Prime Minister Kapanadze compared the situation to "accelerated chess", in which the opposition is trying to postpone checkmate, hoping that the government will make tactical mistakes in its haste.
Arrests during the evening anti-government protests outside parliament have kept political activists in a state of fear, despair and resignation. Dozens of people are languishing in prison or have been fined for blocking roads.
"Georgia has simply disappeared, not only from the European stage, but also from the world stage," said Grigol Gegelia of the banned "Lelo" party. "We are losing our country."
Translated from English by Asen Georgiev, BTA