The ruling party of Georgia won controversial elections – News

Supporters and members of the ruling Georgian Dream party attend a meeting at the party’s headquarters after exit polls were announced for parliamentary elections in Tbilisi on Saturday. AFP

Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party won more than 54 percent of the vote in the country’s parliamentary election on Saturday, the election commission said Sunday, although the results were disputed by opposition parties.

The result, with more than 99% of polling stations counted, is a blow to pro-Western Georgians who have framed the election as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia and an opposition that wants to accelerate integration with Europe. Union.

ISFED, Georgia’s election monitoring group, said it had recorded irregularities, including ballot-stuffing, bribery and voter intimidation, that could have influenced the results.

He noted that he did not notice significant irregularities during 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.

The country’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.

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.

Georgian Dream Ivanishvili says he wants Georgia to join the European Union, although Brussels says the country’s membership bid is on hold 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 the two breakaway regions.

The two countries fought a brief war over the rebel province of South Ossetia in 2008, in which Georgia was defeated.

The election results are a setback for EU enlargement plans, although the bloc may struggle to find a common response.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán congratulated the Georgian Dream party on Saturday ahead of the official announcement of the results, while the EU’s foreign policy department said it could not comment until observers had delivered their findings.

An EU official told Reuters there was a “sense of disappointment” about the opposition’s performance, but Brussels was more concerned about the controversial result leading to a standoff.

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.