PM rejects allegations of voter fraud as president calls mass rally

Georgia’s prime minister hailed the “stunning” election results, rejecting accusations of voter fraud and violence.

“Violations are happening everywhere, in every country,” Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in an exclusive interview.

Official preliminary results from Georgia’s election commission gave the ruling Georgian Dream an absolute majority of 54%, despite exit polls from opposition TV channels showing four opposition parties winning.

Georgia’s pro-Western President Salome Zurabishvili condemned the “total falsification” of the voting results and called on opposition supporters to rally in front of parliament on Monday.

Election observers in the South Caucasus state bordering Russia complained of an “uneven playing field” in the election, suggesting the scale of voting irregularities may have influenced the outcome.

The United States and the European Union supported calls by observers for an independent investigation. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Georgian leaders to “respect the rule of law”repeal legislation that undermines fundamental freedoms and work together to address the shortcomings of the electoral process.”

However, the Prime Minister insisted that out of 3,111 polling stations, incidents occurred in “only a couple of polling stations” and in all others “the situation was completely peaceful.”

Known as the Georgian Dream, it has become increasingly authoritarian, recently passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-governmental groups that receive foreign funding, as well as the LGBT community.

The European Union responded by freezing Georgia’s bid to join the EU, accusing it of “democratic backsliding.” Tbilisi only gained candidate status last December, and an estimated 80% of Georgians want to become part of the 27-nation alliance.

Even before the results were announced, one of the EU’s leaders, Viktor Orban of Hungary, congratulated Georgian Dream on being elected to a fourth term and is due to travel to Georgia on Monday.

The ruling party says it is keen to start talks on reviving its bid to join the EU, but Orban’s arrival in Tbilisi two days after a disputed election is unlikely to please Brussels. Orban is considered Russia’s closest ally in the EU, and the European Parliament has condemned his government as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy.”

GD considers itself close to Orbán’s style of social conservatism. The head of the party’s EU integration committee, Maka Bochorishvili, told the BBC: “Being conservative is not prohibited, family values ​​are also part of European values.”

Responding to widespread reports of voter fraud in the elections, the head of the European Council of EU member states said: Charles Michel said that “the alleged violations must be seriously clarified and addressed.”.

“Of course, we must eliminate these violations that occur on election day or the day before,” the Georgian Prime Minister told the BBC. “But the general content of the elections was consistent with legal principles and the principle of democratic elections.”

Four opposition groups refused to accept the election results, denouncing them as fraudulent, and accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of stealing votes.

Surrounded by opposition leaders, Salome Zurabishvili said the vote could not be recognized and called on people to gather on Rustaveli Street, the large avenue that runs past parliament, to “defend our constitutional right.”

She also accused Russia of interfering in the vote, without elaborating, although Nika Gvaramia of the opposition Coalition for Change alliance made accusations of an “openly planned special operation by Russian intelligence services.”

The Coalition for Change and another opposition group, the United National Movement, said they would boycott parliament.

The opposition will now have 61 seats in the 150-seat parliament, while Georgian Dream will have 89 – a majority but not big enough to push through the constitutional changes it wanted and carry out its threat to ban opposition parties.

Two exit polls conducted by Western sociologists for opposition television channels showed that the opposition won and that the GG received a maximum of 42%, not 54%.

In an interview with the BBC, Kobakhidze accused the opposition of lying, saying they also claimed the votes were rigged in 2016, 2020 and 2021.

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

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

The chairman of Georgia’s election commission, who oversaw the new system, hailed the vote as largely peaceful and free, but the observer groups that presented their initial findings painted a very different picture.

The Georgian group Isfed reported a variety of violations, including bribery, intimidation and ballot stuffing, and said that the result “cannot be seen as truly reflecting the preferences of Georgian voters”.

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

“Voter intimidation… before and on Election Day has seriously undermined the process,” he said.

Georgian Dream founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, has fueled anti-Western rhetoric in recent months, accusing an unknown “global war party” of seeking to drag his country into the war in Ukraine.

His unsubstantiated claims have raised fears that his party is adopting Russian-style laws and returning to Russia’s sphere of influence, 16 years after a five-day war in which Russian troops invaded Georgia.

Russian commentators widely hailed the Georgian Dream victory as a sign that Georgia would begin to turn back toward Moscow.

And Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized the Georgian President’s comments rejecting the election results and questioning Georgia’s accession to the EU.

“To think that the EU can still offer anyone a “European future” is simply stupid,” she wrote on social media.

In an interview with the BBC, Irakli Kobakhidze denied opposition accusations that the government is pro-Russian and “pro-Putinist.” He said they were trying to damage the reputation of the government of Georgia, which has a population of 3.7 million.

The Prime Minister stated 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 war.