The “Coalition for Change” emphasizes that “the elections were falsified and the results were not legitimate.”
“We are not going to legitimize the stolen electoral votes, we are giving up the mandates of the deputies,” said Nana Malashia, who was the number one candidate on the “Coalition for Change” list, at the briefing.
The leader of the “Unity – National Movement” list, Tina Bokuchava, said that a Russian-style special operation was carried out against the Georgian people, who chose a European future.
“We have said that we do not recognize the election results, that in itself means that we are not going to be in the parliament,” Bokuchava said.
The jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili issued a statement saying that none of the opposition parties should be in the Georgian parliament.
According to Saakashvili, now is the time for big protests.
“Of course, none of the opposition parties should be in parliament!” Saakashvili wrote on the social network “Facebook”.
“Now is the time for big protests to show the world that we are fighting for freedom and that we are a nation that will not accept injustice. Time is very short!” emphasized Saakashvili.
It has already been reported that the Central Election Commission of Georgia announced on Sunday that the ruling party “Georgian Dream” won the majority in the national parliament in the elections held on Saturday. On the other hand, the opposition considers the results to be fake.
After counting the votes in more than 99% of the polling stations, “Georgia’s Dream” won 54.08% of the votes, and the alliance of four pro-Western opposition parties – 37.58% of the votes, the chairman of the central election commission, Giorgis Kalandarisvili, said at the press conference.
According to these results, “Georgian Dream” won 91 out of 150 seats in the parliament – enough to form a government without inviting other parties.
The survey of voters, which was conducted by the US sociological research company Edison Research on behalf of the pro-opposition television channel “Formula”, shows that the alliance of four opposition forces together won 51.9% of the votes, and the ruling party “Georgia’s Dream” – 40.9%. voice.
Pro-Western President Salome Zurabishvili has expressed dismay at incidents of violence at some polling stations and accusations of ballot falsification and voter intimidation.
Voting in the elections “was hampered by unequal rules of the game, pressure and tension”, according to the statement of the joint observation mission of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (EPPA), the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO, which also expressed concerns about the reliability of the results.
The current government, formed by the “Georgian Dream” party founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, has started to actually copy the policy of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in domestic policy, but to reproduce Moscow’s anti-Western narrative in foreign policy.
Georgia is a candidate country for the European Union, and Brussels has warned that these elections will determine the country’s chances of joining the bloc.