Georgia’s ruling party wins election, poll body says amid opposition protests | Political news

The result ensures Georgian Dream control of the 150-seat parliament, but lacks an absolute majority to change the constitution.

Georgia’s ruling Georgian Party has won the country’s parliamentary election, the electoral commission says, amid protests from the pro-Western opposition who denounced the vote as a “constitutional coup”.

With more than 99 percent of precincts counted on Sunday, the ruling party received more than 54 percent of the vote, the chairman of the central electoral commission, Giorgi Kalandarishvili, told a press conference.

The four opposition parties received more than 37 percent of the vote, with the Coalition for Change receiving the largest share, with 10.822 percent, according to news site Georgia Today.

Based on preliminary estimates, Georgian Dream’s victory gives him 89 seats in the 150-member parliament – ​​enough to govern, but short of the absolute majority he wants to make sweeping constitutional changes.

The results are seen as a blow to pro-Western Georgians, who have portrayed the election as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia and an opposition that had hoped to speed up integration with the European Union.

Brussels has warned that Saturday’s vote, seen as a crucial test of democracy in the Caucasus country, will determine the EU candidate’s chances of joining the bloc.

Opposition parties said they did not recognize the election result, calling it “fraudulent”.

Tina Bokuchava, the leader of the United National Movement (UNM), which campaigned on a pro-European platform, said the results were “falsified” and the election “stolen”.

“This is an attempt to steal Georgia’s future,” she said, saying UNM did not accept the results.

Nika Gvaramia, leader of the Ahali party, called the way the vote took place “a constitutional coup” by the government. “The Georgian dream will not stay in power,” he said.

Pro-opposition Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili also said there had been “deeply disturbing incidents of violence” at some polling stations.

A Georgian monitoring organization called for the results to be annulled, citing reports of voter intimidation and vote-buying, but did not immediately provide evidence of widespread fraud.

A video circulating on social media also showed a man stuffing a ballot paper with more papers while arguing with poll workers. Another clip showed election observers being attacked by unidentified men.

Several local and international monitoring organizations, including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), are expected to comment on the results later on Sunday.

The billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who campaigned hard to keep Georgia out of the Ukraine war, welcomed the vote’s result, with his party making its strongest performance since 2012 by huge margins of up to 90 percent. in some rural areas.

“It is a rare case in the world for the same party to achieve such success in such a difficult situation – this is a good indicator of the talent of the Georgian people,” Ivanishvili told supporters on Saturday night.

Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream says it wants Georgia to join the EU, although Brussels says the country’s membership bid is on hold because of what it says are Georgian Dream’s “authoritarian” tendencies.

His campaign centered on a conspiracy theory about a “global war party” controlling Western institutions and trying to drag Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war. In a country scarred by Russia’s 2008 invasion, the party sold voters stories of an imminent threat of war, which the Georgian Dream said it could prevent.

Tamta Kukhaleishvili, a voter, told Al Jazeera that political developments in recent years indicate that the country is “moving towards Russia and against democracy”.

“For me, it’s not a country I want to live in,” she said.