On 4th October 2025, Georgia held local elections that will be remembered for many reasons, but not for the actual outcome. These elections broke new ground – only 41% of the population cast their votes, as the majority of the parties decided to boycott the process. Traditionally, local elections in Georgia were never too popular. As a highly centralised state, Georgia has seen repeated – but unsuccessful – attempts by some opposition parties to push for federalisation.
Still, the 4th October elections were different. They were taking place almost a year after Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, had manipulated the results in parliamentary elections that were widely seen as a choice between a pro-Russian and pro-European trajectory. Since then, the ruling party has suspended negotiations with the EU, violently cracked down on protests, and introduced several pieces of repressive legislation. At the time the electoral campaign was announced, Georgia had more than 60 prisoners of conscience in its jails — now it’s closer to 120.
According to the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), the legislative changes to these elections have made the conditions worse than for the previous elections, which were already considered neither free nor fair by the majority of the international observers, the opposition, and Georgia’s 5th President.[1] Georgian Dream scrapped the 40% threshold required for the majoritarian seats, increased the number of majoritarian seats in each city council, and increased the threshold necessary for a party to make it to the local government. These changes meant that statistically, it would be almost impossible for smaller opposition parties to compete.
The recent introduction of the ‘foreign agents law’ and the law that requires all foreign funding to get the government’s approval before it is paid to the beneficiary nonprofits means that observing these elections has become extremely difficult. Further changes introduced have limited the rights of the election observers, effectively giving Georgian Dream an unfair advantage in these and any future elections. Combined with ongoing issues such as vote buying, multiple-voting, and carousels present in Georgia’s elections, the prospect for free or fair elections was diminished.
The opposition faced a choice — boycotting elections and empowering the protest, or participating under a unified candidate. In nonviolent resistance under authoritarian regimes, unity, discipline, and strategic planning are essential. A full boycott would have been a strategic decision — undermining the legitimacy of the process and reinforcing the idea that, after the fiasco of previous parliamentary elections, the electoral way of changing the regime is no longer an option.
However, a unified opposition response was not achieved — the growing authoritarianism, as well as more repressive laws that made it impossible for independent observers to monitor the elections, forced eight opposition parties to boycott the local elections. In contrast, two other parties – ‘Lelo – Strong Georgia’ and ‘Gakharia – For Georgia’ – chose to contest the elections in several municipalities.
The results were not surprising. Incumbent mayor, Kakha Kaladze, got more than 70% of the votes as the majority of the people followed the parties into a boycott. In actual terms, Kaladze got only 20% of the votes from the total population of Tbilisi.
Some groups affiliated with the United National Movement (UNM) scheduled a parallel event on 4th October, announcing a peaceful revolution on the day. The attempt largely failed, with a small group of people attempting to storm the presidential palace, but it was unclear who these people were, as the majority of the protesters had taken to the streets near the Georgian parliament and peacefully protested the elections that they saw as neither free nor fair. Some argue that this was a setup: the government deliberately left access points open, making it easier for a small group of people to enter the garden of the presidential palace, and then cracked down on them afterwards. In the aftermath of 4th October, more than 60 people were prosecuted under the charges of an attempted coup.
The ‘attempted revolution’, as well as the local elections, created a tense reality for both civil society and the opposition. As unity wasn’t achieved prior to the elections, the opposition is risking repeating the mistakes made by their colleagues in Belarus and fragmenting themselves even further. One bloc, the seven parties along with the former President, Salome Zourabichvili, have distanced themselves both from the 4th October attempted revolution and from the local elections. The UNM, meanwhile, is seen as a separate political center in its own right. The parties that decided to participate, on the other hand, have blamed the boycott supporters and proclaimed that they only believe in the change of power through elections. Understandably, mutual blame currently clouds the political landscape, and a challenge remains in moving the resistance movement forward strategically.
The boycott was arguably the right decision. As the Georgian Dream government delegitimised elections, clinging to them for the simulation of the democratic process just prolongs the crisis and wastes resources on battles that are predetermined. Empowering the protest and unifying different factions under the nonviolent resistance umbrella is the only viable solution. At the same time, the fragmented responses harm the common battle, and it is easy to overanalyse the events and find people to blame, with all three segments of the opposition blaming the other two. An important question to ask now is not who was right about 4th October, but what should be done next.
Specific activities are hard to plan, but the overall strategy is simple: unity, strategic planning, and discipline. These three core components can help civic groups and activists in Georgia avoid fragmentation. These same strategies proved effective in Serbia, Ukraine, and in Georgia itself back in 2003 – and are still effective today.[2]
Unity does not mean that all political parties should agree on the same candidate or the same strategy; it means most parties, organisations, and activists agreeing on core principles and distancing themselves from those who undermine them. Strategic planning means focusing on the resources already available rather than on the ones it would like to have – as hard as this can sound. Finally, discipline means directing the limited resources toward the main challenges and identifying potential allies in the new post-4th October reality. Without these three components, any resistance movement is destined to fail.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece are those of the individual author and do not reflect the views of The Foreign Policy Centre.
[1] Civil Georgia, ISFED: Election Law changes tilt October 4 vote further toward Georgian Dream, August 2025, https://civil.ge/archives/697904
[2] Centre for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), 50 Crucial Points: A Strategic Approach to Everyday Tactics, 2006, https://canvasopedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/50-Crucial-Points-web.pdf