This week can be considered one of the most important in Georgia’s political life. The country has officially started the election campaign. A new parliament is to be elected on October 26.

The ruling party has presented its “Dream Team” list of candidates, which turned out to be quite revealing.

The Georgian Dream party has announced the return of its founder and honorary chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili to politics. He is at the top of the electoral list.

Bidzina Ivanishvili had repeatedly expressed his desire to retire from politics for good. It took very important reasons to make him change his mind.

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But Ivanishvili’s return was not the only surprising element this list, as noted in the article by Amiran Khevtsuriani, professor at the Georgian Technical University and founder of the Georgian-Ukrainian Center – Ivanishvili’s return: Why Georgia’s ruling party is preparing for unpleasant surprises in the election.

The inclusion of Georgian Dream founder and honorary chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili, who has always been seen as the party’s “trump card and savior-messiah,” indicates a certain uncertainty within the government.

And this despite the fact that opinion polls by pro-government television stations give the Georgian Dream an approval rating of 60 percent.

An analysis of the list suggests that the Georgian government is not interested in making any significant changes. However, some “fresh blood” has been introduced. The top twenty include Olympic champions Lasha Talakhadze and Geno Petriashvili, as well as several personalities who were “imported” mainly from the business world.

More important and surprising than the list itself, however, is the electoral policy of the ruling party, which has unsettled even its own supporters.

The promises made by Bidzina Ivanishvili at rallies were so scandalous that they shocked a large part of civil society and, crucially, Georgia’s Western partners.

Ivanishvili announced the persecution of the opposition United National Movement party and its Disappearing from Georgian politics, along with his “satellites”, immediately after the parliamentary elections.

The Georgian Dream aims to completely cleanse the political field of the opposition, Establishment of a one-party dictatorship.

In Ambrolauri, Ivanishvili also made another important statement on a highly sensitive and painful issue for Georgian society: the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity.

In short, he stated that gaining the greatest possible public support and achieving a constitutional majority were indispensable conditions for restoring territorial integrity.

However, he left it open how he intends to achieve this and limited himself to vague statements and “awakened anticipation of the opportunities”.

What is remarkable is that, despite the extremely tense relations with the West, the Georgian Dream is running under the motto “With dignity to Europe” and promises that the country will join the EU by 2030.

To a large part of the population, this strategy seems downright absurd – especially in view of the increasingly harsh criticism from Western partners.

All these factors point to one thing: the situation in Georgia is extremely worrying, and the first signs of a fierce confrontation are emerging in the run-up to the elections.

For Georgian Dream, not only the victory of the opposition but also the loss of the absolute majority is unacceptable. Moreover, statements about the need for a constitutional majority show how insecure the government feels.

The conclusions are discouraging: the chances that the “hotheads will back down” and the elections will take place within constitutional limits are rapidly diminishing.

Georgia is heading into a very dangerous time, and the way the country navigates this period could determine its future for many years to come.