On December 14, 2024, Mikheil
Kavelashvili became the president of Georgia, further cementing the Georgian Dream
Party’s grip on power at the expense of the sovereign state’s accession as a
semi-sovereign E.U. state. From the standpoint of representative democracy,
what a contrast with the U.S. state of Georgia. The Georgian Dream Party implicitly
conflated the qualitative difference between the U.S. and state-scale polities
by misappropriating the term, Electoral College, which elects the U.S.
President. There is a reason why that College does not apply at the state
level, yet in its haste to consolidate power in 2017, the Georgian Dream Party replaced
direct presidential elections with an Electoral College, which the party could
control. Sure enough, Kavelashvili was the only candidate in 2024, and he got the
votes of 224 of the 225 electors who were present for the vote.
Of “the 300-seat electoral
college that replaced direct presidential elections in 2017,” the electors were
“made up of MPs [i.e., members of the parliament] and representatives of local
government.”[1] In
contrast, the Electoral College of the U.S. consists not of the existing
governments, but, rather, of people appointed by political parties, which in
turn are given slots based on the popular votes for U.S. president in the member
states. The drafters of the U.S. Constitution believed that the electors should
not represent the legislatures, but should be selected only for the task of
electing the federal president. That the inordinate dominance of political
parties in filling the elector-slots has eliminated the electors’ independence doomed
the efficacy of the U.S.’s Electoral College, which was supposed to be a check
not only on the government officials, but also the people. The reason for the
latter check is that the U.S., as an empire-scale union of states, is too big
for much of the American people to know the candidates—the territories are too
large and the population too large as contrasted with the territories and
populations of states.
The Electoral College of the
sovereign state of Georgia in Eurasia was created without any link to popular
sovereignty (i.e., an election by the people), and without being independent of
the existing government. Rather, the Electoral College is the
government, just for a special purpose. Nor was the population or territory of
Georgia large enough that electors would be necessary because so few of the
electorate had the proximity to know of the candidates enough to be able to
cast votes using good, informed judgment. In short, the federal justifications
for the U.S.’s Electoral College were missing.
Therefore, in its haste to gain
control over the presidency, the Georgian Dream Party misappropriated an element
of American political theory, ignoring both the link to popular election and
the qualitative rather than just quantitative difference between a state and a
union of states. Of course, with raw power in politics/government, might can be
declared to be right, but with a knowledge of comparative politics, the sheer
might of the Georgian Dream Party can be castrated ideationally. With the
democratic legitimacy of Georgia’s government in tatters, the E.U. would act
wisely in saying no on Georgia’s accession unless or until drastic changes are
made to Georgia’s basic law. In the U.S., it is a requirement that every state
be a republic, which means that representative democracy is the basis of a
given polity. In the E.U., the case is likewise. Accordingly, rather than
protesting at the time to get their government to continue with accession talks
with the E.U., the Georgian people should have been oriented to undoing the
damage done to the Georgian political system by walking the Georgian Dream
Party to the exits.
1. Orestes G. Daniel, “Ex-Football Player Kavelashvili Becomes Georgia’s President as Ruling Party Consolidates Power,” Euronews.com, December 14, 2024.
