This ensured that Georgian Dream would control the 150-member parliament, but still lacked the absolute majority needed to amend the constitution.
The electoral commission announced that Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party had won the country’s parliamentary elections, sparking protests from pro-Western opposition parties who denounced the vote as an “unconstitutional coup.” .
Giorgi Qalandarishvili, head of the Central Election Commission, said at a press conference that more than 99% of the electoral districts had been counted on Sunday, with the ruling party receiving more than 54% of the votes.
According to the news website Georgia Today, the four opposition parties received more than 37% of the vote, with the Alliance for Change having the largest share of the vote at 10.822%.
Based on preliminary estimates, Georgian Dream’s victory would give it 89 seats in the 150-member parliament, enough to govern but not enough for an absolute majority to demand major changes to the constitution. It doesn’t reach me.
The result was seen as a blow to pro-Western Georgians, who had cast the election to choose between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia and an opposition party that wanted to hasten integration with the European Union. There is.
Brussels had warned that Saturday’s vote was seen as a key test of democracy in the Caucasus country and would decide whether EU candidates could join the bloc.
Opposition parties said they were not aware of the election results and called the election “rigged.”
Tina Bokučava, leader of the opposition United National Movement (UNM), which campaigned on a pro-European platform, said the results had been “falsified” and the election had been “stolen”.
“This is an attempt to steal Georgia’s future,” she said, declaring that UNM will not accept the results.
Nika Gbaramia, leader of the Ahly Party, called the voting process a “constitutional coup” by the government. “Georgian Dream will not remain in power,” he said.
Pro-opposition Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili also said there had been “very disturbing incidents of violence” at some polling stations.
A Georgian monitoring organization called for the results to be invalidated based on reports of voter intimidation and vote buying, but there was no immediate evidence of large-scale tampering.
A video circulating on social media also showed a man stuffing several pieces of paper into a ballot while scuffling with election workers. Another video showed an election observer being attacked by unidentified men.
Several local and international watchdogs, including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), are expected to comment on the results later on Sunday.
Demonstrators march at an opposition rally in Tbilisi [Zurab Tsertsvadze/AP]
Georgian Dream’s reclusive billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili has campaigned extensively to keep Georgia out of the Ukraine war, but the party’s strongest performance since 2012 was on the back of a wide margin of up to 90 percent. He praised the voting results. In some rural areas.
“It is rare in the world that the same political party achieves such success in such difficult circumstances. This is a good indicator of the talent of the Georgian people,” Ivanishvili told cheering supporters on Saturday night. told.
Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream says it wants Georgia to join the EU, but the city of Brussels says it is freezing the country’s membership application because of Georgian Dream’s “authoritarian” tendencies.
The campaign revolved around conspiracy theories about a “World War Party” that controls Western institutions and seeks to drag Georgia into the Russo-Ukrainian war. In a country scarred by the 2008 Russian invasion, the party has pitched voters on the looming threat of war, which Georgia Dream claims can prevent.
Voter Tamta Kukarishvili told Al Jazeera that political developments in recent years show the country is “moving towards Russia and against democracy.”
“For me, it’s not a country I want to live in,” she said.
