Pro-Western opposition groups in Georgia have refused to accept results that hand victory to the increasingly authoritarian ruling party, the pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party of billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili, according to the BBC.
The opposition has described this high-stakes vote as a choice between Europe or Russia. The BBC says that many saw the vote as the most crucial since Georgians backed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Ivanishvili claimed outright victory and the central election commission said it had won 54% of the vote based on more than 99% districts counted.
The BBC reports that Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party, hailed what he called a “landslide” election result, rejecting allegations of vote-rigging and violence. He is quoted as saying: “Irregularities happen everywhere, in every country.”
The initial results were dramatically different from exit polls conducted by Western pollsters, with analysts saying the ruling party’s increased vote share from four years ago was scarcely credible.
A coalition of 2,000 election observers called My Vote said given the scale of vote-fraud and violence it did not believe the preliminary results “reflect the will of Georgian citizens”.
The BBC quotes Tina Bokuchava of the opposition United National Movement as saying that the elections had been falsified and the vote “stolen from the Georgian people”.
Another opposition leader, Nika Gvaramia, is quoted as saying that Georgian Dream had mounted a “constitutional coup”.
[Image: Bidzina Ivanishvili, The Chancellery of the Senate of the Republic of Poland, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27869112]