Georgian Dream (Georgian: ქართული ოცნება, romanized: kartuli otsneba) was a catch-all political alliance in Georgia formed around Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia (GD – DG) party in opposition to the then-ruling United National Movement (UNM) party. The coalition was formed in 2012 with it winning the parliamentary election held in the same year. The alliance was dissolved in 2016 after which GD – DG went on to win 2016 and 2020 parliamentary elections independently.
The coalition initially included six political parties of diverse ideological orientations. The parties ranged from pro-market and pro-Western liberals to nationalists and protectionists, united in their dislike of Mikheil Saakashvili and UNM. The alliance was further supported by three other parties who while formally not a part of the coalition ran their candidates on Georgian Dream list.
Contents
History
The opposition
United National Movement led by Mikheil Saakashvili had become increasingly unpopular due to numerous scandals, alleged abuse of power, and controversial economic reforms. The Georgian Dream coalition was founded by Bidzina Ivanishvili on 21 February 2012, as a vehicle for his newly established Georgian Dream movement to unite the opposition and challenge the ruling UNM in the parliamentary election of the same year.
Republican Party, led by David Usupashvili, and Our Georgia – Free Democrats, led by Irakli Alasania, had been outlined by Ivanishvili as his future coalition partners in November 2011. In January 2012, Ivanishvili brokered partnership with the Conservative Party, while the National Forum announced its alliance with GD-DG on 6 February. Moreover, some parties, such as People's Party (PP), Social Democrats for the Development of Georgia (SDDG) and Greens Party of Georgia (GPG), also fielded their candidates on the coalition's ticket without formally joining the coalition. In April, Industry Will Save Georgia also joined the alliance.
On 27 May 2012, in a rally held in downtown Tbilisi with 80,000 participants, Ivanishvili announced the start of the election campaign. The rally was one of the largest public demonstrations in the country's post-independence history. In the subsequent months, rallies were held in other major cities in Georgia, including Kutaisi, Zugdidi, and Gori.
The Georgian Dream's campaign surged after the Gldani prison scandal, which highlighted widespread torture in Georgian prisons under Saakashvili's administration. In response to GD rallies that regularly attracted tens of thousands of people, the government responded by staging a rival mass event.
The Georgian Dream coalition successfully challenged the ruling UNM party in the 2012 parliamentary election. It won this election with 54.97% of the vote, gaining 85 seats in parliament. Out of the 85 seats, GD-DG and the non-coalition parties running on its list got 47 seats, Free Democrats - 11, Republican Party - 9, while Conservative Party, Industry Will Save Georgia, and National Forum each got 6 seats. Out of the 47 MPs elected from GD-DG's ticket, GPG, PP, and SDDG got a seat each.
Widespread celebrations were held in Tbilisi in support of Georgian Dream. The next day, President Saakashvili accepted the results as legitimate, while at the same time noting that he remained deeply opposed to the coalition. Saakashvili pledged to support the constitutional process of forming a new government and peaceful transfer of power.
Coalition government (2012-2016)
On 22 October 2012 the Georgian Parliament elected the leader of the Republican Party, Davit Usupashvili as its new speaker. Three days later Ivanishvili was voted in as the country's new prime minister, with 88 votes in favor to 54 against. The most ministries in the 21-member cabinet went to the Georgian Dream party, while the Free Democrats party was represented in the government by four ministers: Tea Tsulukiani as the Minister of Justice, Irakli Alasania as the Minister of Defense and Vice Premier, Alexi Petriashvili as the State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, and Kote Surguladze as the State Minister on the Diaspora Issues. The Republican Party was represented by Paata Zakareishvili as the State Minister for Reintegration, while the National Forum was represented by the Davit Darakhvelidze as the Minister of Internally Displaced Persons.
Being a diverse and eclectic coalition, the Georgian Dream parliamentary majority diversified into several parliamentary factions, with each constituent party in the coalition having its own parliamentary group within the majority: "Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia", "Georgian Dream-Republicans", "Georgian Dream-Conservatives", "Georgian Dream-National Forum", "Georgian Dream-Industrialists", and "Georgian Dream-Free Democrats".
Georgia, under Ivanishvili's leadership, retained most of the reforms passed during the UNM government. Georgia maintained the free market economic model, while also establishing a functional social safety net. During Ivanishvili's tenure as the prime minister, the government increased social spending. In 2013, the government increased pensions, social assistance allowances, and education spending. Georgian Dream introduced the Universal Healthcare Program (UHP). The reform made state-sponsored health insurance available on a mass scale. In June 2013, the parliament adopted a new Labour Code in line with International Labour Organization (ILO) standards.
The government implemented prison and crime reform. During the previous administration, that pursued a zero-tolerance policy, the prisoner numbers shot up from 6,000 in 2003 to 24,000 in 2012. The prisons were overcrowded and prisoners were subject to systematic torture. During GD’s rule, the mortality rate in prisons considerably went down and prison healthcare was overhauled. Additionally, the practice of cumulative sentencing was abolished in April 2013.
Coalition dissolution (2013-2016)
Major cracks began to appear within the ruling coalition in 2014, with some observers already in January 2013 describing the government as a "fragile unity", predicting it would dissolve either due to disagreements over the distribution of government positions, foreign policy differences, or the receding threat of the United National Movement returning to power. However, some other analysts have questioned the speculations about the coalition's prospective swift disintegration, citing the weakness of the majority of coalition's member parties and their consistent inability to overcome the 5% threshold to make it into the parliament prior to joining their forces with the Georgian Dream party in a coalition in 2012.
People's Party was first to withdraw, doing it so all the way back in February 2013, with Koba Davitashvili, the leader of the party, citing the "elite" making all decisions within the coalition and its inability to act as a united team. Davitashvili only formally remained in the parliament, claiming he was quitting politics with him not participating in parliamentary work. On 19 February 2014, Giorgi Gachechiladze, the only MP representing the Greens party, decided to leave the parliamentary majority and set as an independent, citing Georgian Dream's alleged unwillingness to have his and his party's opinion be heard.
Free Democrats were the next to announce their withdrawal in November 2014 a day after Prime Minister Garibashvili's decision to dismiss Irakli Alasania from his post of Defence Minister. Alasania was replaced by the Georgian Dream candidate Mindia Janelidze and later the Republican Party candidate Tina Khidasheli in May 2015. The Free Democrats' withdrawal led to the emergence of a new opposition faction in the Georgian parliament and a party-switch by several MPs between the ruling coalition and the new Free Democrats faction. While State Minister for European Integration Alexi Petriashvili and Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze, Alasania's sister-in-law, announced their resignation, the Justice Minister Thea Tsulukiani stated that she would keep the post.
The defection of MPs from the Georgian Dream coalition initially led to it losing the parliamentary majority. However, by 10 November, 12 independent majoritarian MPs, initially elected under UNM but later quitting the party following its defeat in the 2012 election, joined the Georgian Dream coalition, which led to its number of MPs increasing to 87 in the parliament. Thus, as a result of the crisis, Georgian Dream managed to increase its representation in the parliament by four seats. Analysts saw this as unsurprising as those independent MPs were frequently voting along with the Georgian Dream coalition, despite not being official members. Some of these new MPs joined the Georgian Dream coalition as a new faction "Independent Majoritarians-For Strong Regions", while others directly joined the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia faction. The Free Democrats faction emerged with 8 MPs.
Post-coalition
Following the election, inside the parliamentary majority "Georgian Dream – Conservatives", "Georgian Dream – Social Democrats", and "Georgian Dream – Greens" factions were established. Additionally, the Georgian Dream – Industrialists faction was established by Nozadze and five other Georgian Dream MPs.
In April 2018, the Social Democrats announced their intention to run independently in the 2020 parliamentary election. In February 2019, the party announced that it was leaving the Georgian Dream majority, with its leader Gia Zhorzholiani citing disagreements on economic, agricultural, and pension matters. At the same time, Zhorzholiani made it clear that they would be willing to cooperate with all parties, except for the United National Movement and European Georgia. The disassociation with the Georgian Dream party was eventually formalized by March 2019, with some members becoming independent MPs, while Social Democrats leader Zhorzholiani and others joined the Alliance of Patriots faction in parliament. Zhorzholiani cited general agreement on core issues such as "support for lower classes" and patriotic values as the reason for him joining the faction.
Further cracks in the Georgian Dream majority came to light during the 2019 anti-government protests. The Conservative Party left the Georgian Dream parliamentary majority following disagreements within the government over electoral reform in November 2019. Its leader Zviad Dzidziguri would later negatively assess the period of his party's association with Georgian Dream party, saying that while being a part of the Georgian Dream majority, the party lost the ability to directly communicate with voters and its electoral base.
This configuration left the Greens party the only party that maintained its ties with the Georgian Dream after 2019. However, before the 2020 parliamentary election, the Greens Party announced that they would run independently in the election. Georgian Dream was able to re-create its 2016 performance in the popular vote but lost 25 seats under the amended electoral system, while neither the Greens nor the Conservatives managed to win any seats in parliament on their own.
Ideology
The Georgian Dream coalition included parties of diverse ideological orientations. The lead party Georgian Dream described itself as social-democratic, with observers attributing "social-democratic tendencies" to the party in its early days. Furthermore, the coalition was made up of parties ranging from pro-market and pro-western liberals to nationalists and protectionists, united in their dislike of Saakashvili and the United National Movement.
Georgian Dream's 12-point manifesto included among other policies, the development of liberal democracy, deepening integration with the European Union and NATO, and improvement of education and healthcare infrastructure. The main goals of Georgian Dream were stated to be a revival of agriculture, lowering taxes on the poor, universal health insurance, normalization of relations with Russia and strengthening Georgia's ties to the EU and NATO.
Georgian Dream's style of governance has been characterized as technocratic populism with an "ideology-free" governance strategy transcending the traditional right–left ideological divide through an appeal to the "effective governance" based on expertise garnered outside of politics. Ivanishvili has been described as a central figure maintaining the unity of the coalition through his leadership, with his message to the public being based on utilizing output-oriented expertise as a governance strategy, in particular, the managerial skills he earned as a business leader, promising "effectiveness".
The coalition has often undertaken ideology-free zigzagging, in particular, when it first passed an anti-discrimination law to satisfy the EU's requirements for visa liberalization but later enshrined the traditional definition of marriage in the constitution to satisfy conservative voters. An additional example is the government introducing universal health care but later reverting it to a non-universal system after a significant increase in public expenses.
Economic policy
The Georgian Dream coalition united parties with eclectic fiscal views. The coalition included both economically liberal and social democratic wings. The coalition has introduced a universal healthcare system and a new labor code. Nevertheless, they have committed to "economic openness" and "market-driven growth", implementing both social democratic and neoliberal policies. In addition, the leading Georgian Dream party itself held mixed views on economic issues, with it having a prominent liberal wing despite being a self-described social democratic party.
Social policy
The coalition's social policy has been described as inconsistent. The coalition passed an anti-discrimination law that provided "protection against discrimination of sexual minorities". However, at the same time, it supported a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The proposed amendment caused a split within the ruling coalition itself, with members of the liberal-leaning Republican Party of Georgia campaigning against the initiative, despite two of its lawmakers putting their signatures on the initiation of the bill.
Similarly, Bidzina Ivanishvili brushed off the proposal to ban abortion in 2013, stating that solving demographic problems "first and foremost needs economic development", despite other leading members of the coalition, such as Irakli Garibashvili, speaking against abortion, describing it as a murder.
Foreign policy
The constituent parties of Georgian Dream held divergent views on foreign policy issues. Two of the coalition members — the liberal parties Republicans and Free Democrats — expressed a pro-Western foreign policy, while some members of the coalition did not support European integration or membership into NATO. National Forum and Industry Will Save Georgia (IWSG) opposed Georgia's NATO membership and advocated neutrality. They did not reject EU integration. Ivanishvili and the GD party expressed support for the EU and NATO membership, and the coalition overall supported it. Parts of the coalition have been labeled pro-Russian with even Ivanishvili himself commenting on "pro-Russian aspirations" of IWSG.
The coalition's program itself sought to combine the European Union and NATO integration with a balanced foreign policy with Russia. Upon taking office as prime minister in October 2012, Ivanishvili promised to push for Georgia's integration with the West, while at the same time combining it with a bid to restore relations with Russia. One of the means for achieving this, explicitly mentioned in the coalition's programme, was for Georgia "not to be a point of contention between the West and Russia". Ivanishvili explicitly described himself as "being in favor of balance" and for Georgia to be "interesting for everyone".
Ivanishvili has described returning Abkhazia and South Ossetia under Georgia's sovereignty as one of his main goals. The coalition sought to reintegrate South Ossetia and Abkhazia into Georgia diplomatically rather than by military confrontation with Russia. The first step towards de-escalation was mending cultural and economic ties with Russia. Ivanishvili recognized that Georgia lacked leverage for negotiations with Russia, however, he still thought that occupation of Georgian territories was potentially more damaging to Russia itself compared to a peaceful resolution of conflict. As for Abkhazians and Ossetians, Ivanishvili envisaged making various economic, legal, and other incentives for their reintegration into Georgia.
At the same time, while supporting the normalization of relations with Russia, the coalition envisaged Georgia as firmly aligned with the Western world, with the Georgian Dream coalition describing the EU and NATO integration as Georgia's foreign policy priorities. In 2013, Georgia rejected membership to the Eurasian Economic Union, instead signing the association agreement with the European Union.
Composition
The six full members of the Georgian Dream coalition.
The three supporting members of the Georgian Dream coalition.