Georgia PM welcomes ‘huge’ vote condemned as rigged by president

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze rejected accusations of voter fraud and violence in Saturday’s elections and called the disputed result a “landslide” and a decisive victory for the country, whose northern neighbor is Russia.

“There are violations everywhere,” the Georgian Dream prime minister 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 fraud” of the vote, and election observers suggested irregularities may have influenced the result.

However, the Prime Minister assured that out of 3,111 polling stations, incidents occurred “only in a couple of polling stations.”

Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian, passing Russian-style laws targeting the 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.”

But one EU leader, Viktor Orban of Hungary, was particularly quick to congratulate the party on its fourth term in office and is due to travel to Georgia on Monday.

Georgian Dream 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.

In his initial statement on Sunday evening, the head of the EU’s European Leadership Council said: Charles Michel said that “the alleged violations must be seriously clarified and addressed.” and called for a swift, transparent and independent investigation.

“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.

They will now have 61 seats in the 150-seat parliament, while Georgian Dream will have 89 seats – a majority, but not big enough to pass the constitutional changes it wanted and 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 the rest likely to follow suit.

Protests are also expected to take place in the coming days and President Zurabishvili, who has backed the opposition, said Georgians had to unite and say they did not agree with the result.

Kobakhidze accused the opposition of lying, claiming that they said elections 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 range of violations, including bribery, intimidation and ballot fraud.

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 seriously undermined the process.”

Kobakhidze also used his interview with the BBC’s Russia editor to accuse the opposition of falsely accusing the government of being pro-Russian and “pro-Putin” in an attempt to undermine its reputation among Georgia’s 3.7 million population, which is overwhelmingly pro-European.

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

However, Irakli Kobakhidze told the BBC that Georgia was the only country in its region that did not have diplomatic relations with Russia due to the Russian occupation of 20% of Georgian territory after the five-day war in 2008.