Georgia’s ruling party is winning the disputed election, almost complete results show

Felix Light and Lucy Papachristou

TBILISI (Reuters). The ruling Georgian Dream party won more than 54 percent of the vote in Georgia’s parliamentary election on Saturday, the election commission said Sunday, although the results were contested by opposition parties.

The result, with more than 99 percent of polling stations counted, dealt a blow to pro-Western Georgians who cast their vote as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia and an opposition that wants to speed up integration with the European Union. .

Three separate monitoring missions – the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), consisting of 57 countries; US non-profit organizations National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI); and a Georgian election monitor all reported significant irregularities during Saturday’s vote.

Irregularities including ballot-stuffing, bribery, voter intimidation and physical violence near polling stations could have affected the results, the groups said on Sunday.

However, all three monitoring missions did not claim that the election was stolen or rigged – claims by opposition groups doubled down on Sunday.

“We continue to express deep concern about the rollback of democracy in Georgia,” said Antonio López-Isturiz White, head of the European Parliament’s delegation to the OSCE mission.

“The holding of yesterday’s elections, unfortunately, is proof of that,” he said at a briefing.

ISFED, Georgia’s election monitoring group, said its observers had filed more than 200 complaints with election authorities, although they said they had not noticed any significant irregularities in the counting of votes, most of which were counted electronically.

The election commission and the Georgian Dream party did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the allegations, but on Saturday both hailed the free and fair election. Georgian Dream is expected to comment on the matter later on Sunday.

Georgia’s four main opposition parties said they did not recognize the results, and one opposition leader called the results a “constitutional coup”. They cited two exit polls that showed the opposition winning the majority of seats in parliament.

The leader of the opposition party “United National Movement” Tina Bokuchava said that the elections were “stolen”.

“My position, our position is that we definitely need a protest,” she told Reuters on Sunday.

But reclusive billionaire Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, who campaigned hard to keep Georgia out of the war in Ukraine, claimed victory Saturday night after his party’s strongest showing since 2012.

Electoral commission data showed him winning by a huge margin of up to 90% in some rural areas, although he was less effective in big cities.

“It is a rare case in the world that one and the same party has achieved such success in such a difficult situation – it is a good indicator of the talent of the Georgian people,” Ivanishvili told jubilant supporters on Saturday evening.

EU MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION IN FOCUS

Georgian Dream Ivanishvili says he wants Georgia to join the EU, although Brussels says the Caucasian country’s membership application is frozen because of what he says are Georgian Dream’s authoritarian tendencies.

“Georgian Dream” pushed a law on “foreign agents” and another that restricts LGBT rights. Both drew sharp criticism from Western countries, but were approved by some Russian officials.

Georgia was one of the most pro-Western countries to leave the Soviet Union, and polls have shown that many Georgians dislike Russia for its support of two separatist regions in their country.

In 2008, Russia and Georgia fought over the rebel province of South Ossetia. Georgia was defeated.

An EU official told Reuters there was a “sense of disappointment” over the actions of the Georgian opposition, which has hampered EU enlargement plans, but Brussels is primarily concerned about the disputed result leading to a standoff.

The foreign ministers of Estonia and Latvia said they were concerned about reports of election irregularities.

One local monitoring organization called for the results to be annulled based on reports of voter intimidation and vote-buying, but it did not immediately provide evidence of widespread fraud.

Last week, Moldova narrowly voted to approve its entry into the European Union in a vote that Moldovan officials say was marred by Russian interference.

(Reporting by Felix Light and Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi, Lili Bayer in Brussels; Editing by David Goodman and Mark Heinrich)