TBILISI: Tens of thousands of Georgians protested in central Tbilisi on Monday (Oct 28) after parliamentary polls denounced by the pro-Western opposition as “stolen”, while Georgia’s president alleged to AFP that the vote was rigged using “sophisticated” methods she linked to Russia.
The Caucasus country – rocked by mass anti-government protests earlier this year – has plunged into political uncertainty since Saturday’s vote, with Washington and Brussels condemning “irregularities”.
According to near-complete results announced by the electoral commission, the ruling Georgian Dream party won 53.92 per cent, compared with the 37.78 per cent garnered by a union of four pro-Western opposition alliances.
Georgian Dream has for months been accused by the opposition of steering Tbilisi away from its goal of joining the EU and back into Russia’s orbit.
Waving Georgian and EU flags, tens of thousands of demonstrators held a peaceful protest outside the main parliament building in central Tbilisi on Monday evening that ended with calls for further rallies, AFP journalists saw.
Pro-Western President Salome Zurabishvili – at loggerheads with the ruling party – told the cheering crowd: “Your votes were stolen, but we will not let anyone steal our future.”
“I promise to stand with you until the end, on our path towards Europe, where we belong,” she said.
Opposition leader Giorgi Vashadze said opposition parties would not enter the new “illegitimate” parliament and voiced their joint demand for “fresh legislative elections” run by an “international election administration”.
One of the demonstrators, university student Irine Chkuaseli, 19, said she had initially felt “hopeless” but since then has become “fired up to fight for the truth”.
“We will not stop until these fake (election) results are cancelled,” she said.
Speaking to AFP, Zurabishvili claimed that “quite sophisticated” fraudulent schemes were used in the weekend’s vote.
She earlier declared the election results “illegitimate”, alleging election interference by a “Russian special operation”, a claim that was swiftly rejected by the Kremlin.
“It’s very difficult to accuse a government, and that’s not my role, but the methodology is Russian,” Zurabishvili told AFP, adding that it was difficult to deal with a “threatening” Russia.
She claimed that the same identity cards were used to vote multiple times in different regions, that money was distributed outside polling stations, and that there were violations using electronic voting technology.
A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors on Monday said that they had uncovered evidence of complex, large-scale fraud and demanded the annulment of at least 15 per cent of votes cast.
Defying the EU’s concerns over the vote, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – current holder of the bloc’s rotating presidency and the Kremlin’s closest EU associate – arrived on Monday for a two-day visit to Tbilisi.
Source: CNA
