The Breaker Times

Mass protests are expected in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi on Monday after the ruling, Russia-friendly party Georgian Dream claimed victory in a contentious parliamentary election this weekend.

The increasingly authoritarian party that’s been in power for the last 12 years claimed another election win following the vote on Saturday, but the country’s pro-Western president and opposition parties have refused to accept the results, saying the vote was neither free, nor fair.

The country’s pro-Western President Salome Zurabishvili called on the public to protest in central Tbilisi Monday evening, saying the opposition will not tolerate “election fraud” and that “nobody can take away Georgia’s European future,” according to comments reported by Georgia’s Interpress news agency.

Georgia’s central election commission said on its website Monday that Georgian Dream had won 53.9% of the vote with 99% of the country’s voting districts counted. Georgia has a lively opposition movement but it is fractured, with its four largest opposition coalitions each garnering around 8-11% of the vote.

Voter polls in the run up to the election painted a conflicting view of which way the vote could go as pro-government and pro-opposition TV networks broadcast conflicting exit polls as to the initial result of the election.

The election was seen as a pivotal moment for the former Soviet republic, and perhaps its most important vote since independence following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, with the ballot seen as a choice on whether to remain within Russia’s orbit, or to pursue previously-stated ambitions to join the European Union (EU) and NATO.

While Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili claimed the result was a demonstration of public support for the party’s policies and vision for Georgia, opposition parties were quick to denounce and dispute the election results, saying election fraud was widespread.

“We do not accept these stolen election results,” stated Tina Bokuchava, the leader of Georgia’s main opposition party, the United National Movement, at a press briefing late on Saturday. The party leads a coalition called the Unity-National Movement that received 10.1% of the vote.

Bokuchava accused Georgian Dream’s founder Bidzina Ivanishvili of stealing the Georgian people’s “European future” as she called on the opposition to unite to restore Georgia’s “European future.”

“We do not accept stolen election results and we are not going to recognize these stolen results … We will fight like never before for the return of our European future and we will not accept the results of stolen elections,” she said, Interpress news agency reported.

Georgian President Zourabichvili, a staunch critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party, called on citizens to stage a mass protest on Monday evening, describing the vote as a “Russian special operation.”

“It was a total fraud, a total taking away of your votes,” Zourabichvili told reporters, flanked by Georgian opposition party leaders, in comments reported by Reuters. She called on Georgians to protest in Tbilisi, “to announce to the world that we do not recognize these elections.”

Timothy Ash, emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said the opposition parties, which polled best in large cities, “can get large numbers onto the streets” to protest. He warned there was the potential for further violence between protestors and security forces, similar to violent encounters earlier in the year following controversial government policies.

“I would expect the ruling Georgia Dream regime to deploy large number of security forces and use maximum pressure to tough it out with demonstrators,” Ash said in emailed comments, adding that he “would not rule out the deployment of security forces from Russia to support [Georgian Dream founder] Ivanishvili,” he said, describing the election as “the latest stress point between Russia and the West.”

The election results are likely to have caused consternation in Europe and the U.S. given an ongoing geopolitical tussle with Russia for influence over the former Soviet landscape. Georgian opposition parties had accused Russia of playing a significant role in vote-rigging ahead of the election, but Moscow has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

The Kremlin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov again said that allegations of election meddling were “absolutely unfounded.”

“We resolutely reject such accusations,” Peskov told reporters Monday, according to comments reported by TASS news agency and translated by Google. “They have become standard for many countries, and at the slightest thing they immediately accuse Russia of interference. No, that is not true, there was no interference, and the accusations are absolutely unfounded,” he said.

Western officials noted that the election had taken place against a backdrop of increasing political polarization, highly divisive campaign rhetoric and widespread reports of pressure on voters, but there was also recognition that Georgia’s election day was, for the most part, administered in an orderly manner.

The International Election Observation Mission led by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) noted Sunday that its international observers generally reported that Georgia’s election was “marred by an uneven playing field, pressure and tension, but voters were offered a wide choice” on the ballot paper and that candidates could generally campaign freely.

The European Commission also said in a statement that “election day was generally procedurally well-organised and administered in an orderly manner” but that the vote had taken place in a “tense environment, with frequent compromises in vote secrecy and several procedural inconsistencies, as well as reports of intimidation and pressure on voters that negatively impacted public trust in the process.”

In a separate statement Monday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Sunday that the pre-election environment was “marked by the ruling party’s misuse of public resources, vote buying, and voter intimidation, all of which contributed to an uneven playing field and undermined public and international trust in the possibility of a fair outcome.” 

Blinken said the U.S. joined calls from international and local observers for a full investigation “of all reports of election-related violations” and called on Georgia’s leaders “to respect the rule of law, repeal legislation that undermines fundamental freedoms, and address deficiencies in the electoral process together.”

Blinken concluded his statement with a reminder to Tbilisi that Georgia’s European and Euro-Atlantic integration goals “require that the government respect the rights of members of civil society and the fundamental freedoms of all Georgian citizens.”

Just how committed Georgia remains to pro-Western integration is uncertain.

Prime Minister Kobakhidze said on Monday that European integration remained a top foreign policy priority for the government, with 2030 the target for joining the bloc. However, the ruling party’s domestic and foreign policy has become increasingly authoritarian in recent years, rolling back on commitments to cement democratic values in keeping with its EU membership aspirations. 

As well as rolling back on media freedom and LGBT rights, Georgian Dream’s introduction this summer of a Russia-style “foreign agents” law looking to curb perceived foreign influence was seen as a further drift toward an authoritarian, Kremlin-style rule and mass protests were met with a harsh police response.

The party initially supported Georgia’s pro-Western trajectory but has since become cooler on that front and anti-democratic policies enacted by the party have been met with concern in Brussels, with EU accession talks frozen earlier this year.

Georgian Dream campaigned on an anti-war platform, claiming a vote for pro-Western opposition parties would lead Georgia down a path to a direct conflict with Russia, as in Ukraine.