Georgian election: Ivanishvili holds mass rally before crucial vote

The National Movement (UNM) makes up the biggest of the four opposition groups and Ivanishvili has called for it to be banned, along with anyone else in the opposition seen as “the enemy of the people and the enemy of the country”.

Georgian Dream (GD) has already pushed through two big laws widely criticised by the West. Earlier this month, the party’s speaker of parliament signed into law an anti-LGBT law, defying pro-Western president Salome Zurabishvili who had refused to do so.

And in May a Russia-style “foreign agents” law targeted foreign funding of media and civil rights groups, in the face of mass protests in Liberty Square and nearby parliament.

Zurabishvili has called on Georgians not to “be afraid”. Speaking on opposition-supporting Formula TV, she said they should vote for opposition parties who had all signed up to an action plan to join the EU.

Georgia has become so polarised that bigger, government-supporting TV channels give one story, and the opposition channels tell another.

Georgian Dream maintains it is still on course to join the EU. It has even adapted the EU’s 12 golden stars into its own blue star logo, regardless of the EU freezing Georgia’s application to join.

But one of its election posters is far more sinister, showing six opposition leaders, all held on a leash above the message: “No to war, no to agents.”