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00:00Georgia is heading to the polls this Saturday in a high-stakes parliamentary election seen as a
00:04choice between Russia and the EU. A union of pro-Western opposition forces will face off
00:10against the ruling party, which has been accused of aligning with Moscow and steering the country
00:15away from its long-standing hopes for EU membership. For more, we can bring in Marika
00:20Mikiashvili, a member of Coalition for Change from the DROA party. Thank you so much for joining us
00:26on the program. I'd like to begin by asking just how big are the stakes in this election?
00:34Hello, I'm very glad to be here with you. Well, the stakes are existential. It's absolutely
00:40decisive elections for us. It's a choice between going back onto the Russian orbit or a democratic
00:48European free future. For us Georgians, European choice has always been historical,
00:53civilizational, and we want to return to our European family where we think we belong,
01:00and the government denies us that opportunity. So, this is the last elections where we can
01:09defeat them through elections. If they still manage to cling to power, there will not be
01:14any elections left in the country, and it will become full dictatorship. But I have good news
01:20now. We are cautiously optimistic and poised to win thanks to the high turnout and the opinion
01:28polls and the atmosphere in the run-up to elections and today as well. And how can this
01:34election decide the country's future path in Europe? Well, when we win these elections,
01:43and as I said, we are absolutely poised to win, then the opposition coalition government,
01:50we will immediately launch these reforms, judicial, police reforms, and others that are
01:56outlined by the Georgian president's Georgian charter, and that is the roadmap and framework
02:03to launch reforms that are necessary for Georgia to have EU accession talks opened. So,
02:10among the opposition parties, we have this big umbrella agreement on what to do in order to
02:18obtain negotiation talks with the European Union. And the president, who is, by the way, French-born,
02:24had a very pivotal role in that. Now, a lot's at stake, obviously, for Georgia, but this election
02:31is also of high importance for Europe and Russia as well, isn't it? Yes, of course. It's very
02:39important for the entire region of Eastern Europe, and particularly Armenia, by the way,
02:44because Georgia is Armenia's only land connection to European Union and European aspirations,
02:50basically. And now, with Armenia procuring French weapons for defense, if Georgia is
02:57fully put on Russian orbit, we might simply not allow these shipments to Armenia. But also,
03:04more broadly, we had huge protests against this foreign agents law this year. And if,
03:10despite this unprecedented public mobilization and Western support for the people of Georgia,
03:16this illiberal government wins with their illiberal legislation, we will have autocrats
03:23and wannabe autocrats in especially EU enlargement area encouraged to do the same.
03:29And there are already cases, for example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, the
03:34pro-Russian Serbian separatist president of one of the entities in Bosnia, he's also supposed to
03:42adopt this foreign agents law. And he's now waiting for what political cost the Georgian
03:47dream will pay. And one more thing. This is the last government in Georgia that Russia controls,
03:54absolutely, because through new electoral laws in Georgia, no single party will be able
04:01to have outright majority. And even this government, the Georgian dream, they never
04:08came as pro-Russian force. In Georgia, everyone in the country is absolutely consolidated
04:14about our European choice. 85% plus of people want European integration. That is why they were
04:23never elected as a pro-Russian force. They unmasked themselves as pro-Russians only lately,
04:30after they captured the entire state. And when Russia's invasion in Ukraine opened the window
04:38of opportunity for Georgia to actually proceed with European integration, and they had to make
04:43specific tangible choices. So after they are gone, Russians have no more political, social,
04:51cultural foothold in the country. This is the last Russian government in Georgia
04:56that we will be defeating today. And lastly, we've been hearing that there have been
05:02disinformation narratives that have circulated during the election campaign.
05:06Could you expand on what these are and how much of a concern or not this is?
05:12Well, yes, there have been several disinformation narratives. The narrative that the opposition
05:18will start war with Russia, that the anti-LGBT narrative that the European Union imposes LGBT
05:27issues upon Georgia, and a lot of different things. But no single narrative really worked
05:33for them. They needed to try out several narratives, but overall, people do not really
05:39trust them anymore. These narratives do not penetrate majority of the public. You know what
05:45the main promise of the government is before the elections? That they will ban opposition parties.
05:53Their main pre-election promise is to ban opposition parties and declare us all unconstitutional
05:59as a revenge against the previous government who they unseated 12 years ago. They had 12 years
06:08to offer something to the public, but they have nothing to offer other than prosecuting us all.
06:15All right, Marika Mikiashvili, thank you very much indeed for sharing your
06:18views with us here on the program. Thank you very much. Thank you.