Georgians protested Saturday after a poll committee rubber-stamped the ruling party's victory in a contentious parliamentary vote that featured allegations of Russian interference and demands for an investigation into allegations of Western fraud.
Pro-Western opposition parties in the Caucasus countries have condemned the Oct. 26 vote as “rigged,” and the European Union and the United States have called for an investigation into allegations of “rigging” in the election.
According to the National Election Commission, the Georgian Dream party received 53.93% of the vote, while the four-party opposition coalition received 37.79%.
Critics accuse the increasingly conservative party of pushing Georgia off the European path and pulling Tbilisi back into Moscow's orbit. Saturday's final results by the electoral commission gave Georgian Dream 89 seats in the 150-member parliament, which opposition parties consider “illegitimate” and refuse to take part.
Hundreds of opposition supporters held a rally outside the commission's headquarters, the latest in a series of protests against the controversial result since the October vote. Before the results were announced, the committee session was briefly suspended after an opposition representative threw black paint on the face of chairman Giorgi Qalandarishvili.
Georgian President Salome Zurabichvili, who is at odds with the ruling party, also called the vote illegitimate and accused Russia of meddling. Moscow denied intervening. She joined opposition calls for a new vote and said she would not issue a decree to convene a new parliament.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Tbilisi to protest allegations of election fraud. Universities in large cities across Georgia were engulfed by student protests Friday night, and opposition parties announced they were planning large rallies when the newly elected parliament held its first session.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze insisted the elections were free and fair and said parliament would convene within 10 days of announcing the final results, even without a presidential summons from Zurabichvili.
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Kobakhidze said last week that all major opposition parties “should continue to act in violation of the constitution” despite his party failing to secure the constitutional majority of 113 seats it sought to enact the ban. threatened to ban it.
Georgia's leading election observers say they have uncovered evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale election fraud to tip the outcome in Georgian Dream's favor.
Edison Research, a US public opinion polling company, said exit polls had predicted a victory for the opposition, and that the discrepancy between that prediction and the official results “cannot be explained by normal fluctuations,” adding, “It suggests vote manipulation at the local level.” “I am doing so,” he said. All of Edison's previous exit polls conducted in Georgia since 2012 have matched official results, and the exit poll model used in Georgia this year is similar to ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC US presidential election exit polls. It was the same as that used in
Earlier this month, EU Council President Charles Michel said: “There are serious suspicions of wrongdoing and a serious investigation is required.” Georgia is an EU candidate state, and the city of Brussels warned before the election that its chances of joining the EU would be determined by the vote.
