The numbers are high as voters decide the path to Europe

Georgians are going to the polls to decide whether to end 12 years of dictatorship, in an election that will determine their future path towards the European Union.

Georgia borders Russia and the ruling Georgian Dream party is accused by the opposition of turning away from the West and returning to Russia’s path. The EU has suspended Georgia’s EU application due to “backsliding democracy”.

“I voted for a new Georgia,” said Western President Salome Zourabichvili.

Saturday’s vote has been described as the most important since Georgians voted for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. There were reports of scuffles and ballot tampering as tempers flared at polling stations.

About 3.5 million Georgians are eligible to vote until 16:00 GMT in this high-stakes election that opponents call an election between Europe or Russia, but the government frames it as a matter of peace or war.

The Georgian Dream is expected to come first, but the four opposition parties believe they can join forces to remove him from power and revive Georgia’s EU process.

Four out of five voters are said to be against joining the EU in the South Caucasus state, which fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008.

It was only last December that the EU made Georgia a candidate. But that plan was put on hold after the government passed a Russian-style law requiring groups to register as “foreign interests” if they receive 20% of their funding from abroad.

Politics here has become very complicated, like the Georgian Dream, under the direction of the richest man in Georgia, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is seeking a fourth term of power.

If Ivanishvili’s party wins a large enough majority, he has vowed to shut down opposition parties, especially the big one, the United National Movement.

Georgian Dream, known as GD, is expected to win about a third of the vote according to opinion polls, although it is widely seen as unreliable. If the GD is to be issued, all four opposition parties will have to win more than 5% of the vote to qualify for the 150-seat parliament.

Ivanishvili’s speech has become anti-Western and, after voting in Tbilisi, he told reporters that Georgians had a simple choice of a government that works for them, or the opposition of “foreign agents, who will only do foreign orders. country”.

President Zourabichvili has come out in support of the coalition government of opposition parties to end the “rule of one party in Georgia”. When he voted, he said there will be people who “won, but no one will lose”.

He has agreed a charter with four major clubs so that if they win, the technocrat government will fill the void. It will then roll back laws deemed dangerous to Georgia’s path to the EU and move to snap elections.

Tina Bokuchava, who chairs the main opposition party, the United National Movement, insists that all reliable polls put the opposition ahead.

But while Georgian Dream told voters they would still join the EU, it warned them that a victory for the opposition would trigger a war with Russia.

The party’s billboards show different pictures of destroyed cities in Ukraine next to peaceful Georgia, with the slogan: “No war! Choose peace.”

GD says the opposition will help the West open a new front in Russia’s war in Ukraine, while the Georgian Dream will maintain peace with its neighbor Russia, which still occupies 20% of its territory after the 2008 war.

Although the ruling party’s claims are baseless and its billboards are widely criticized, its message seems to have succeeded.

In Kaspi, an industrial town northwest of Tbilisi, a 41-year-old woman told the BBC: “I don’t like the Georgian Dream, but I hate it. [opposition United] National Movement – and at least we will have peace.”

Another woman named Lali, 68, said that the opposition may bring Europe closer, but they will bring war again.

Election observers reported numerous violations at polling stations, including ballot stuffing and physical attacks on opposition politicians in Marneuli, south of Tbilisi.

The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy said observers reported violations in 9.1% of polling stations. On the eve of the vote, it said people’s IDs had been taken, and pointed to Russian-sponsored disinfection operations.

The BBC spoke to one voter, Aleksandre, in a village north-west of the capital who said he was threatened by a local GD man that he would lose his job if he did not register to vote for the Georgian Dream: “I am a human being, I am afraid of his threats, but what should I do?”

Georgian Dream insists on making elections more transparent, with a new electronic vote counting system.

“For 12 years we have an opposition group that questions the legitimacy of the Georgian government every time. And that is not a normal situation at all,” said Maka Bochorishvili, the head of the GD of the EU parliamentary integration committee.

Critics say in some quarters there is a genuine fear that the vote is not truly secret.

“All these ideas about forcing people to vote for certain political parties – in the end you are alone and you cast your vote, and electronic machines count that vote,” said Bochorishvili.

Near the center of Tbilisi, Vano Chkhikvadze points to graffiti plastered in red on the walls and floor outside his office at the Civil Society Foundation.

After the “foreign influence” law was passed, in the face of massive protests in the center of Tbilisi and other major cities, he says that he himself was labeled by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze as a traitor to the state.

“We were getting calls in the middle of the night. Our children were getting calls. They were being threatened.”

Ahead of the vote, the EU warned that the actions of Georgian Dream “show a shift in the state’s behavior”.

Whoever wins, the loser is unlikely to accept defeat easily.