The Georgian Electoral Commission announced the winner of Saturday’s parliamentary elections, the ruling party Georgian Dream, reported the Voice of America server. The group, which is close to Russia, won over 54 percent after counting almost all the votes. The party’s result is surprisingly high, according to the analyst.
The result is a blow to pro-Western Georgians who believed in the success of the opposition. The main opposition parties do not recognize the results. The monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said the elections were generally well organized, but there were cases of vote-buying and repeat voting, and the atmosphere was generally tense.
The OSCE also noted that the elections offered a wide range of choices, but unequal financial conditions undermined confidence in the outcome, it said. There are also questions about the impartiality of state institutions. The organization also spoke of an atmosphere of hatred and intimidation.
“Unfortunately, in the regions, we were eyewitnesses to repeated voting, physical attacks on election observers by the electoral commission, pressure on voters and even the insertion of multiple ballots by one person,” remarked Markéta Gregorová, Czech MEP for the Pirates, who was part of the European Parliament’s observation mission .
Georgia’s election monitoring group ISFED said it had seen violations of election rules, including situations where someone stuffed many ballots into ballot boxes at once, voter intimidation and bribery, which could have influenced the results. While counting the votes, most of which were cast electronically, she saw no serious irregularities.
The Electoral Commission and the Georgian Dream party have not yet responded to the group’s claims, but already on Saturday they spoke about free and fair elections. “It is a rare case in the world when one party achieves such success in such a difficult situation,” commented the founder of the Georgian Dream, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, about the results. According to him, it shows the “talent of Georgians”.
A number of politicians and the media called the election in advance a vote in which people will choose between Europe and Russia. Pro-Western President Salome Zourabishvili spoke of a choice between “the European future and the Russian past”, while Ivanishvili warned of the possibility of Georgia being drawn into the war in Ukraine.
However, according to Ondřej Ditrych, an analyst at the Paris-based EU Security Studies Institute, such a black-and-white framing is too simplistic. “The voters of the Georgian Dream did not necessarily vote against the European Union and certainly not “for Russia”, even though the Kremlin’s attempt to somehow influence the result was obvious,” the analyst says. However, he perceives the party’s result as surprisingly high given the party’s long-term preferences.
According to Ditrych, it will be interesting to see how foreign observers will evaluate the course of the elections. Markéta Gregorová, the Czech MEP for the Pirates, was also part of the European Parliament’s observation mission. She stated on the X network today that, in her opinion, the elections were not fair.
According to Dietrich, it will also be interesting to see what the protests will be like. “What part of society will the opposition manage to mobilize against the result they question and how will the government react,” he said. Ditrych perceives the risk that the situation will escalate as relatively high.
Georgia has long been among the post-Soviet countries with the strongest Western orientation. However, its relations with the West cooled significantly after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February last year. The Georgian government refused to impose anti-Russian sanctions, and the rhetoric of the Georgian Dream became increasingly pro-Russian. Both the opposition and the West accuse the ruling party of introducing authoritarian policies in the style of the current Russian regime.
About 3.7 million people live in Georgia and it is a candidate for EU membership, but the twenty-seventh country has suspended the accession process due to the government’s actions.
Video: Gas and water cannons. Police in Georgia arrest 63 people during protests (May 3, 2024)
Gas and water cannons. Police in Georgia arrested 63 people during protests | Video: Reuters