Georgia: the ruling party wins the legislative elections, observers denounce ”pressure”

The ruling party won the legislative elections in Georgia, but the pro-Western opposition castigated a “stolen” vote and international observers denounced on Sunday “pressure” on voters and a decline in democracy.

The opposition claims that this victory brings this Caucasian country closer to Moscow and further away from membership in the European Union, a goal so precious in the eyes of a large part of the population that it is enshrined in its Constitution. The Georgian Dream won 54.08% of the votes, compared to 37.58% for the pro-European coalition, according to the count carried out in more than 99% of the constituencies, the president of the commission said at a press conference. central election, Giorgi Kalandarishvili.

The vote “took place in a calm and free environment”, he added, despite several violent incidents widely reported on social networks on Saturday. The vote in this Caucasian country was “marred by inequalities (between candidates, editor’s note), pressures and tensions”, however, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) estimated on Sunday. NATO or even EU bodies.

The ruling party benefited from “numerous advantages”, notably financial, there were “cases of vote buying”, violations of “vote secrecy”, they listed in a press release, while one of these observers, the Spanish MEP Antonio Lopez-Isturiz White, regretted a “setback of democracy” in Georgia.

“Instability”

During the night, the opposition, which had initially claimed victory based on exit polls, refused to concede defeat. “We do not recognize the distorted results of stolen elections,” Tina Bokoutchava, head of the United National Movement (UNM), one of the four parties in the opposition coalition, declared at a press conference.

The government should have 91 seats out of 150 in Parliament. A majority sufficient to govern but below the three-quarters mark that he wanted to obtain to modify the Constitution and, under his project, ban pro-Western opposition parties.

The country is entering “a period of instability”, says analyst Gela Vasadze of the Georgia Strategic Analysis Center, judging the country’s European hopes “vanished”. But “the opposition lacks charismatic leaders who could channel popular anger,” he continues.

Convinced that the Georgian Dream “stole the election”, Mariam, 32 years old and who does not give her name, does not know what attitude the opponents will adopt: “Continue again and again to demonstrate, or do what the Belarusians did , leave the country. Georgia was rocked in May by large protests against a “foreign influence” law, inspired by Russian “foreign agents” legislation used to crush civil society.

Brussels subsequently froze the EU accession process and the United States took sanctions against Georgian officials. The opposition accuses the Georgian Dream, in business since 2012, of pro-Russian authoritarian drift and of distancing Georgia from the EU and NATO, which it also aims to join.

Brussels, which did not react on Sunday, warned that Georgia’s chances of entering the EU would depend on these elections organized in this former Soviet republic of around four million inhabitants. The first foreign leader to react on Saturday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader who remained close to Moscow, welcomed the “overwhelming” victory of the ruling party.

“Big neighbor”

Another cause of tensions with Westerners: a law severely restricting the rights of LGBT+ people in this country of Orthodox Christian tradition where hostility towards sexual minorities remains strong. Some leaders of the Georgian Dream are very critical of Westerners. Its leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, called them a “global war party,” which would treat Georgia, its victim, as “cannon fodder.” This country on the shores of the Black Sea remains very marked by a brief war in 2008 with the Russian army.

At its conclusion, Russia installed military bases in two Georgian separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose unilaterally proclaimed independence it recognized.

In this context, the Georgian Dream campaigned by presenting itself as the only one capable of preventing a supposed “Ukrainization” of Georgia.

This is the argument that guided Temuri Titovi, a 52-year-old entrepreneur: “That’s how it is, there is such a big neighbor. Whether you like it or not, you have to have a relationship with him.