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Uncertainty grips Georgia after a pivotal election handed a victory to the increasingly anti-Western ruling party.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has called on citizens to take to the streets in protest, saying the ruling party used widespread fraud to win Saturday’s nationwide election.
In a speech alongside opposition leaders on Sunday, she said: “I do not accept this election. It cannot be accepted, accepting it would be accepting Russia into this country, the acceptance of Georgia’s subordination to Russia,” she said, inviting supporters to gather outside the country’s parliament at 7.00 p.m. on Monday to oppose the result.
“We became witnesses and victims of a Russia special operation,” added Zourabichvili, who has become one of the most prominent critics of the ruling Georgian Dream party. “They stole our right to choice, they carried out a Russian election.”
Opposition parties cried foul after preliminary results showed a lead for the ruling Georgian Dream party, which took 53 percent of the vote compared the opposition bloc’s 38 percent.
The opposition Coalition for Change said their MPs would not take up their parliamentary mandates because the election results were rigged.
Violence erupted at multiple polling stations in Georgia on Saturday as voters cast their ballots. Observer organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), reported concerns over vote-buying, “imbalances in financial resources, a divisive campaign atmosphere, and recent legislative amendments.”
The National Democratic Institute’s international observer mission noted that the pre-election period was compromised by widespread threats, harassment and in some cases violence, affecting voters, activists and political actors.
The 53 percent vote share achieved by Georgian Dream would allow the ruling party to form a government without needing a coalition with other parties.
The election is widely regarded as a pivotal for Georgia’s prospects of joining the European Union. Critics have slammed the government’s increasingly authoritarian trajectory and close ties with Russia.
Georgia’s EU membership prospects were stalled after the Georgian government adopted a controversial Russian-style “foreign agents” law, despite warnings that it could jeopardize Georgia’s bid to join the bloc.
In the lead-up to the election, the ruling party had also pledged to ban virtually all opposition parties, and has passed a string of Russian-style laws branding Western-backed human rights groups and media outlets as ‘foreign agents,’ and outlawing public references to the LGBTQ+ community.
A joint statement declaring the vote was “neither free nor fair” was signed by more than a dozen European and Canadian politicians, including the chairs of parliamentary foreign affairs committees in Germany, Lithuania, Ireland and Ukraine. “Against this background, the European Union cannot recognise the result,” it reads.
However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán moved to quickly congratulate Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and the Georgian Dream party “on their overwhelming victory at the parliamentary elections.” Orbán will visit Tbilisi on Oct. 28, the Georgian government announced, in a move likely to rile follow EU leaders.
European Council President Charles Michel decried the alleged intimidation and interference, and said “these alleged irregularities must be seriously clarified and addressed.”
“What a disgrace,” wrote Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže on X, commenting on the reports from the OSCE. “I applaud the Georgian people who came out to vote en masse despite intimidation. Their wish for a European future must be respected by any Georgian government,” Braže said.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna also expressed his concerns over “reports of irregularities,” writing on X: “Closely following the evaluations of international & local observers.”
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