It wasn’t the landslide victory they had hoped for, but the ruling party, Georgian Dream, won Saturday’s parliamentary elections with more than 54 percent of the vote. With this, the party gained 89 of the 150 seats in parliament in Tbilisi: more than enough to continue governing alone. The joint pro-Western opposition group won 38 percent of the vote.
The fight doesn’t seem to be over yet. Shortly after the first official results came out on Saturday evening, the largest opposition party said it rejected the results. According to them, there was massive fraud during the election.
On Sunday evening, pro-Western President Salome Zurabishvili also joined. Zurabishvili, a prominent critic of the government, said there was “election fraud: vote theft, Russian special operations.” He called on the public to join large-scale protests in Tbilisi on Monday evening.
It is true, many reports of irregularities emerged throughout Saturday. There were dozens of physical confrontations at polling stations across the country and journalists and election observers were verbally or physically intimidated in various places. In addition, there were reports of ballot manipulation, violations of voting confidentiality, voter buying, and attempts to persuade voters to vote more than once.
The OSCE found voter intimidation
A bad sign, as also stated by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) during a press conference on Sunday afternoon. International observers noted that the election was “marred by deep-rooted polarization” and marked by “a climate of coercion, pressure and intimidation of voters.” However, the OSCE, in its role as an observer, did not draw firm conclusions about whether to overturn the results or not.
However, the opposition will not just stop there. “This election was stolen; we will not give in to that,” said Elene Khoshtaria of the opposition Coalition for Change party on Saturday evening. He and his fellow opponents announced that they would continue their fight now that “Georgia has officially become an autocracy.”
By doing this, the government’s critics repeated their assertion that the ruling Georgian Dream party was slowly but surely destroying democracy in the Caucasus Republic and handing the country over to Moscow. According to them, the party wants to sabotage the country’s path in Europe by establishing an autocratic one-party state and therefore resorting to increasingly repressive methods, which the Kremlin emulates.
Anti-gay laws are the writing on the wall
As evidence of the country’s ‘Russification’, the opposition points to, among other things, the introduction of a controversial foreign agents law, which restricts NGOs and media receiving money from abroad. According to critics, the recently introduced anti-gay propaganda law is also evidence of autocracy and a sign that the government does not see it as a democratic duty to protect minority groups.
In turn, the government believes that the opposition is a danger to the country. According to Georgian Dream, his political opponents are under the control of the West. They aim to overthrow the government through chaos and revolution and drag Georgia into war with Russia, causing the country to face a fate like Ukraine.
It was not for nothing that the party leader and mayor of Tbilisi, Kacha Kaladze, warned on Saturday evening that there would be a ‘very stiff reaction’ if ‘someone dares to take unlawful action’. In this way he seems to be preparing for the upcoming protests. Or in his own words: “When you organize a coup, you have to have the support of society and the population. Now the opposition, the radical groups, have been defeated.”
Both parties appear to be bracing for a new battle and the way is wide open for another open confrontation between the government and the opposition.
Also read:
Georgia faced with choice between Brussels and Moscow: ‘The West wants to dictate what we think’
There is a general election in Georgia on Saturday. The ruling party, Georgian Dream, seeks a fourth term in office and responds to threats of war violence and conservative values. ‘Our culture is under pressure.’
The Georgian government was hacked by Russia for years
Russian security services have been hacking Georgian institutions for years, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. This makes the upcoming elections in Georgia tense.