The president of Georgia does not recognize the electoral result and calls on the population to protest against the Government

The president of Georgia, Salomé Zurabishvili, has joined the opposition by refusing to recognize the results of Saturday’s elections, which, according to official scrutiny, have revalidated the absolute majority of the populist Georgian Dream party (SG), ruling for 12 years. years. “These elections cannot be recognized, we do not accept them. They have deprived us of our right to vote. Nothing can legitimize these elections,” the head of state said this Sunday in a press conference surrounded by the main opposition leaders.

Zurabishvili accused Russia of having carried out a “special operation” and “a new type of hybrid war” against the Georgian people and called on citizens to protest on Monday against the fraud. The Georgian president, who was elected by popular vote in 2018 with the support of SG, has distanced herself from the ruling party due to its successive repressive laws and for what she considers a rapprochement with the Kremlin and a deviation from the path towards European accession, the process of which was frozen this summer precisely due to the approval of regulations contrary to Community legislation. Thus, Zurabishvili has become a unifying element of the disintegrated opposition, which he had made sign a minimum agreement to govern in coalition in case of defeating Georgian Dream. Now, however, the entire opposition as a whole refuses to recognize the results, and two of the four coalitions have announced that they will not collect the deputy records.

International and local observers of Saturday’s elections in Georgia have denounced numerous irregularities this Sunday, including coercion, voter intimidation and bribery in a process that, according to the Central Electoral Commission’s count, SG has won. The party would have revalidated its absolute majority by obtaining 54% of the vote – six points more than in the 2016 and 2020 elections – and 89 of the 150 seats in Parliament.

International observers who monitored the elections have drawn attention to the numerous irregularities that occurred before and during the electoral process, from difficulties in guaranteeing the secret vote to intimidation and vote buying. “All this information leads us to question the fairness of the process,” said Iulian Bulai, leader of the observer group of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), at a press conference in Tbilisi this Sunday.

A dozen European deputies have asked in an open letter that “the results not be recognized internationally,” because they did not meet democratic standards and there was “electoral fraud.” The foreign ministers of Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have also expressed their “concern” about the “irregularities” detected by international observers and have asked the Georgian government to investigate them. The one who does not seem to care is the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, who has become an example for SG’s ultra-conservative turn, and who will land in Tbilisi on Monday on an official visit. He was also the first president to congratulate the Georgian party on its victory, even before the first official results were known.

In total, 530 observers from PACE, the European Parliament, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly They monitored about 62% of the 3,111 polling stations where voting took place on Saturday in the Caucasian country, with 3.7 million inhabitants, in elections that were held in a climate of great polarization.

In 6% of the polling stations observed, “the process is evaluated negatively, mainly due to evidence of pressure and intimidation of voters,” indicates the provisional report of the observers, which draws attention to the fact that this is a “figure “significantly high” by the standards of an electoral process. Furthermore, in 24% of the schools observed, “the secret vote was compromised” due to the way in which the ballots were marked or placed in the ballot box.

In fact, a video of an interview with an observer from the Azerbaijan mission – independent of the OSCE mission – has gone viral, who, in front of the microphones, assures that the process is being clean while, behind him, one can see how a voter photographs his ballot, something that is prohibited. Among other issues, this prohibition attempts to prevent voters from being required to prove their vote.

According to Eoghan Murphy, head of the ODIHR mission, there was “extensive pressure” from members of the ruling party on voters, “especially towards civil servants and economically vulnerable people”, for example by collecting data and identity cards from voters in the weeks before the vote. This organization also claims to have received allegations of “vote buying” and of people who voted more than once. Likewise, international observers criticize the difference in funds between the campaign of the ruling party and the opposition – including the use of state funds and acts -, the “politicization” of the Central Electoral Commission – with changes in its statutes that have reduced the presence of opposition members― and the “attacks against people and property” of the opposition parties during the campaign. However, international observers declined to assess the result of the vote, since it is outside their mandate.

The chairman of the US Congressional Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Joe Wilson, also denounced the “credible allegations of systematic violations”, as well as “Russia’s well-documented attempts to disrupt the elections”. A recent investigation by the Bloomberg news agency states that, between 2017 and 2020, Russia hacked numerous Georgian state bodies, from the Central Bank to the Electoral Commission. A few days before the elections, Bulgarian investigative journalist Christo Grozev – who found out the identity of the pro-Russian rebels who shot down flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 – said in an interview that he had received hacked emails from Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, in which they supposedly propose “radical measures” to prevent Georgia from becoming a “new Armenia” (the neighboring country is moving away from the Russian orbit to move closer to the EU). Among the plans, the journalist states, was to declare a “megavictory.”

In fact, on Saturday, hours before the polls closed, Georgian Dream leaders were already talking about a “solid majority” and demanding that the opposition commit to recognizing the result. Two hours before the voting concluded, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated: “The data confirms that a convincing victory for the ruling party is guaranteed,” although he did not specify where this data came from, since, at that time, the Ballot boxes still remained sealed and the polling companies could not reveal their exit polls. “We already knew that the opposition would lack dignity to resign itself to defeat, but that is already a tradition,” the prime minister reiterated on Saturday morning, according to Efe, and denied the accusations of fraud, as did the Electoral Commission.

Although the opposition expected a significant decrease in votes for SG following the protests this spring, the results published by the Electoral Commission indicate that it has increased its base by almost 200,000 votes. To do this, all the ballots of those who did not vote in 2020 should have been taken, in addition to all the votes lost by the extreme right and the remaining extra-parliamentary forces. On the other hand, the opposition, despite attending more united than in previous elections, would have barely added 2,000 more ballots and would have fallen 2.4% in the percentage vote.

Even more worrying are the results in rural districts, where support for the ruling party has increased between 15 and 30 points, reaching almost 90% of the votes in places like Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda; and 80% in Marneuli. These are also districts where, according to observers from My Vote – a coalition of NGOs – “systematic” electoral violations have occurred. This organization affirms that the high number of “serious and substantial” irregularities were part of “a large-scale plan aimed at altering the results of the elections.” Also the International Society for Free Elections and Democracy (ISFED), which had 1,500 observers on the ground, maintains that the irregularities “had a decisive impact on the result.”