Thread by @terjehelland

🇬🇪Georgia’s paradox: a government despised by its people, yet firmly in power.
Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream survives not through popularity, but by fusing repression, economic dependency, and rigged institutions.
🧵In this thread I try to explain this paradox.

1/16

Polls are clear: Georgians distrust the government, dislike Ivanishvili, and want a European future🇪🇺.
And yet, since 2012, Georgian Dream has ruled without interruption.
Why?
Because the state has been rewired into a machine of loyalty and fear.

2/16

It looks less like a democracy and more like a neo-feudal pyramid.
Ivanishvili sits at the top. Beneath him: ministers, governors, mayors, civil servants - their jobs secured not by merit, but by obedience.

3/16

A Georgian Dream created librarian in a village without a library - will do anything to keep the status quo.
Positions don’t exist to serve the public. They exist to lock families into loyalty networks where dissent risks survival.

4/16

The economy is central to this system.
Public contracts, subsidies, and privatizations overwhelmingly flow to GD-linked companies.
Entrepreneurs know: loyalty means survival, defiance means exclusion.

5/16

This is not capitalism or a free economy.
It is a patronage economy where taxpayer money is siphoned into inflated contracts, ghost jobs, and political handouts.
It keeps Georgian Dream afloat, but drains the country’s future.

6/16

Fear tightens the grip.
Civil servants risk dismissal if they attend opposition rallies. Activists face harassment and lawsuits.
Protesters meet police batons, fines, or prison.

7/16

But there’s also benefit.
Ahead of elections, pensions rise. Farmers get subsidies. Food parcels appear in villages. Utility bills are written off.

People know these are @GeorgianDream41 bribes - but survival often wins over principle.

8/16

This dual logic of fear and benefit is Georgian Dream’s survival formula.
Most Georgians dislike the party, but many comply because resistance is costly while compliance is rewarded.

9/16

And then there are elections themselves.
By 2024, GD had captured the judiciary, ombudsman, and election administration.
The infamous “corridor of fear” greeted voters outside the polls with regime loyalist and surveillance.
Ballot secrecy was a myth.

10/16

As Natia Mezvrishvili @N_mezvrishvili showed in her Beyond the Ballot Box analysis, Georgia’s elections aren’t stolen on election day.
They are stolen years in advance through legal manipulation, surveillance, and institutional capture.

11/16
substack.com/inbox/post/171…

Repression is growing.
Reports from Amnesty, HRW, and the US State Dept. show escalating human rights violations: arbitrary arrests, beatings of protesters, surveillance of activists, intimidation of journalists.

12/16
amnesty.org/en/location/eu…

This regime is not only authoritarian. It is expensive.

Every ghost job, bribe, propaganda channel, and security operation drains the Georgian taxpayer.

Citizens pay the bill. Ivanishvili and his enablers pocket the profit.

13/16

This is why sanctions must be strategic, not symbolic.

Targeting Ivanishvili alone is insufficient. To weaken Georgian Dream, the West must sanction the fixers, donor-linked companies, corrupt judges and offshore networks that sustain the system.

14/16

For a deeper dive, read my Substack analysis:
“Repression, dependency, and the survival of Georgian Dream” 🔗

15/16 terjehelland1.substack.com/p/georgias-par…

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16/16buymeacoffee.com/terjehelland