Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili called on Sunday for people to take to the streets to protest the results of Saturday’s disputed parliamentary election, which the electoral commission said the ruling party had won.
The Georgian Dream party clinched nearly 54% of the vote, the commission said, as opposition parties contested the result and vote monitors reported significant violations.
Zourabichvili, a former Georgian Dream ally turned fierce critic of the ruling party, said she did not recognise the results and referred to the vote as a “Russian special operation”. She did not clarify whether she believed Russia had a direct role in the elections.
“It was a total fraud, a total taking away of your votes,” Zourabichvili told reporters, flanked by Georgian opposition party leaders.
Zourabichvili called on Georgians to protest in the centre of the capital, Tbilisi, on Monday evening “to announce to the world that we do not recognise these elections”.
Georgian Dream, now headed for a fourth term in office, will take 89 seats in parliament, one less than it secured in 2020, the commission said, with four pro-Western opposition parties receiving 61 seats in total.
A series of violations were reported on Sunday by three separate monitoring missions, including the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The groups said the alleged violations, including ballot-stuffing, bribery, voter intimidation and violence near polling stations, could have affected the result but stopped short of calling the outcome fraudulent. — Reuters — Archive
Georgia’s central electoral commission said it would recount ballots at some 14% of polling stations on Tuesday after independent monitors raised concerns about the conduct of Saturday’s parliamentary election.
The European Union, NATO and the United States have demanded a full investigation into reports of vote-buying, voter intimidation and ballot stuffing raised by monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and other bodies.
The election commission, which previously hailed the vote as free and fair, said it would conduct a recount of ballots in five randomly selected polling stations in each of Georgia’s 84 electoral districts.
It did not say when the results of the recount would be made public.
“To ensure transparency, all authorized representatives are invited to observe the ballot recount process,” the commission said in a statement.
Official results showed Georgian Dream won 1.12 million votes – 335,000 votes more than the combined four main opposition parties, which are deeply divided.
The party won huge margins of up to 90% in some rural areas, but underperformed in Tbilisi and other large cities.
My Vote, a Georgian monitoring coalition, said it had uncovered evidence of “large-scale election fraud” confirmed by photographs, videos and eyewitness testimonies from its observers.
It said it had logged over 900 reports of voting irregularities at over a third of polling stations across the country and was taking its findings to the electoral commission. — Reuters — Archive
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili gives interview to Reuters after parliamentary election: Youtube
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday that the election in Georgia won by the ruling party was free and democratic, as he congratulated his Georgian counterpart Irakli Kobakhidze during a visit to Tbilisi.
“I read the assessment of international organisations and I see that nobody dares question that this election was a fair and democratic election,” Orban told a news conference. “Alongside all the criticism nobody dared go that far.” — Reuters — Archive
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