VIRTUAL EVENT. Georgian Election 2020: What to Expect and Why It Is Important

This event will be held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube Live. There will be no in-person event.

Register here for the Zoom webinar, or tune in on YouTube Live.

Please join the Harriman Institute for a panel discussion about the 2020 parliamentary election in Georgia.

On October 31, 2020, Georgia will go to the polls to elect a new parliament. Since the last parliamentary election four years ago, Georgia has experienced a spate of opposition demonstrations, continued slow annexation by Russia into Georgian territory and, like the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic. The election will test Georgia’s ability to further consolidate its democracy, give opposition forces an opportunity to strengthen and diversify their voices in parliament, challenge the governing Georgian Dream coalition to persuade the Georgian people they deserve to remain in power, and will chart Georgia’s political course for the next four years. This panel of Georgian and American scholars and activists will discuss this election and its meaning from several key perspectives.

PANELISTS

Michael Hikari Cecire, non-resident scholar at the Frontier Europe Initiative, Middle East Institute; Director of the Eurasia Democratic Security Network

Anna Dolidze, Georgian politician, lawyer, scholar, writer and public speaker

Laura Linderman, senior fellow at the Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council

Alex Scrivener, analyst; 2019-2020 Eurasia Democratic Security Network fellow at the Center for Social Sciences, Tbilisi

Moderator: Lincoln Mitchell, political analyst, pundit, and writer; associate research scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University