Georgia PM rejects claims of election fraud as president calls mass rally

Georgian Prime Minister Iraklii Kobakhidze rejected allegations of fraud and violence in Saturday’s election and called the disputed result a “convincing” and decisive victory for the country, which has Russia as its northern neighbor.

“Violations happen everywhere,” the Georgian Dream prime minister told Steve Rosenberg in an exclusive interview.

The official preliminary results of Georgia’s election commission gave the ruling party “Georgian Dream” an absolute majority of 54%, despite the exit polls of opposition TV channels, which indicate the victory of four opposition parties.

Georgia’s pro-Western president Salome Zurabishvili condemned the “total falsification” of the vote and called on opposition supporters to hold a rally outside parliament on Monday.

Election observers speculated that a variety of voting irregularities may have influenced the outcome. However, the prime minister insisted that out of 3,111 polling stations, there were “only a few” incidents.

The Georgian Dream is becoming increasingly authoritarian, passing Russian-style laws targeting the media and foreign-funded non-governmental groups, as well as the LGBT community. In response, the European Union froze Georgia’s application to join the EU, accusing it of “departing from democracy.”

However, one of the EU leaders, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, was especially quick to congratulate the party on its fourth term and is due to travel to Georgia on Monday.

Georgian Dream says it is keen to start talks to revive its bid to join the EU, but Brussels is unlikely to welcome Orbán’s arrival in Tbilisi two days after a disputed election.

In the first statement on Sunday evening, the head of the European Council of EU leaders, Charles Michel said that “alleged violations must be seriously investigated and investigated” and called for a swift, transparent and independent investigation.

“Of course, we have to solve these violations that happen on or before election day,” the Georgian prime minister told the BBC. “But the general content of the election was in accordance with the legal principles and the principles of democratic elections.”

Four opposition groups refused to recognize the election results, denouncing them as rigged, and accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of vote rigging.

They will now have 61 seats in the 150-seat parliament, while Georgian Dream will have 89 — a majority but not large enough to enact the constitutional changes it wanted to carry out its threat to ban opposition parties.

Two of the four opposition groups, the Coalition for Change and the United National Movement, have said they will boycott parliament, with others likely to follow suit.

Surrounded by all the opposition leaders, the president of Georgia declared that the vote cannot be recognized and accused Russia of meddling in the election.

In his BBC interview, Kobakhidze accused the opposition of lying, claiming that it had also claimed that the vote was rigged in 2016, 2020 and 2021.

“Of course, they have no other choice now, so they have to tell their supporters that either they lied or the government rigged the election.”

The electronic vote-counting system was used for the first time on Saturday, and the prime minister said it made it impossible to rig the election: “There is no room for manipulation.”

The head of Georgia’s election commission, who monitored the new system, called the vote largely peaceful and free, but monitoring groups that presented their first findings showed a very different picture.

The Georgian group Isfed reported a series of violations, including bribery, intimidation and ballot-stuffing, and said that the result “cannot be considered as a true reflection of the preferences of Georgian voters”.

Per Eklund, a former EU ambassador who was part of a delegation from the National Democratic Institute, said it was clear that the pre-election period in particular did not meet democratic standards.

“Voter intimidation … in the run-up to and on election day seriously undermined the process,” he said.

Kobakhidze also used his BBC interview to refute accusations by the opposition that the government was pro-Russian and “Pro-Putin”. He said they were trying to damage the government’s reputation with Georgia’s 3.7 million population, which is largely pro-European.

Russian commentators widely hailed the victory of Georgian Dream as a sign that Georgia would begin to return to Moscow.

However, the prime minister said that Georgia is the only country in its region that does not have diplomatic relations with Russia due to Russia’s occupation of 20% of Georgia’s territory after the 2008 five-day war.