KUTAISI, Georgia — Three days before Georgia’s presidential election, Ivane Merabishvili, the former prime minister and still a leader of the country’s main opposition party, sat in a courtroom here, in the glass box reserved for defendants held without bail.

Prosecution witnesses were testifying against him in a convoluted case of alleged vote-buying ahead of last year’s parliamentary elections, which his party lost. In a larger sense, though, Mr. Merabishvili was Exhibit A of the consequences of falling out of power in this part of the world, which can mean not just losing a job but facing prosecution, prison, exile or worse.

As voters go to the polls on Sunday to replace President Mikheil Saakashvili in what by all predictions will be a rare, peaceful transition, Mr. Merabishvili is not alone. More than 10 other former ministers or other high-level officials who served with him in Mr. Saakashvili’s government are on trial or facing prosecutions that could bring long sentences.

There is also intense speculation that Mr. Saakashvili will be arrested when he leaves the presidency later this month — to the point that he has been in talks about taking a position as a visiting professor at Columbia University, with supporters advising him that time outside the country might reduce his chances of incarceration.