The Electoral Commission of Georgia confirmed this Thursday the victory of the ruling party in the last legislative elections held this past weekend, after the pro-European opposition claimed that the vote was “stolen” and 14% of the votes were counted again. the ballots from about 12% of the polling stations. Faced with these accusations, the European Union has been cautious, but has asked to investigate what happened.
The victory of the party in power is bad news for Brussels since it distances the country from joining the community bloc. Before the recount, the Electoral Commission had announced that Georgian Dream obtained about 53.92% of the votes and the opposition 37.78% of the votes. The Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation on Wednesday for “alleged falsification” of the elections, but the country’s president, the pro-European Salomé Zurabishvili, has refused to appear.
The Attorney General’s Office made a general call this Thursday to “cooperate in a timely manner” with the open investigation. Without directly mentioning the president, the Prosecutor’s Office defends that there are cases of “people who publicly declared that they have information and evidence of possible crimes who still do not cooperate with the investigation and refuse to provide relevant information, which makes the investigation process difficult.”
“There are many irregularities, some serious, and the OSCE has not declared that the elections are free and fair. An investigation is needed to clarify what happened, what the scope is and how it affects the electoral results,” said the head of community diplomacy, Josep Borrell, on Wednesday.
Before the party in power was declared the winner, exit polls predicted that the opposition parties had obtained 51.9% compared to 40.9% of the votes for Georgian Dream. The Central Electoral Commission had anticipated that 90% of the votes would have been counted two hours after the polling stations closed, but it finally published the data several hours later, without giving any type of justification. Given these movements, the opposition parties consider that the results have been rigged and groups of national observers assure that incidents occurred during the voting process in several polling stations. The opposition forces have assured that they will try to block the composition of the new chamber.
The current government that belongs to the Georgian Dream party has been in power since 2012. Although at first it presented itself as a pro-European and pro-NATO political force (it was responsible for including in the Constitution in 2017 the aspiration to enter the European bloc and the Atlantic Alliance) in recent years has shifted towards positions close to Moscow.
The point that seems to be one of no return came with the approval months ago of a law called “foreign agents” that forces media outlets and non-governmental organizations that obtain more than 20% of the budget of other countries to register as “carriers of the interests of a foreign power.”
The country’s opposition and the European institutions consider that this law aims to control the media to curtail press freedom and that it has been drafted in the image and likeness of Russian regulations. The Community Executive ended up “de facto” suspending accession to the EU last July. Georgia had obtained the status of a candidate country shortly before, in December 2023. The US even imposed sanctions due to the brutal repression unleashed in the country against those who demonstrated against this law.
In its latest report on the progress of the candidate countries for Enlargement published this Wednesday, Brussels has been especially harsh with Georgia and has asked it to withdraw both the law on foreign agents and other regulations on the prohibition of “LGTBI propaganda.” .
Before the elections, Georgian Dream had promised to get closer to the European Union again. According to the ruling party, the opposition forces want to turn the country into a second Ukraine. In fact, the electoral slogan has been “No to war, choose peace.” The former Soviet republic already experienced a Russian military operation in 2008 in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The rapprochement of the Western bloc of the former Soviet republics is not easy. Two weeks ago, Moldova faced crucial elections in which the “yes” to the European Union was won by a very narrow margin. While 50.4% of voters supported changing the Constitution so that the former Soviet republic can join the community club, 49.6% were against. In this case, both the opposition and the European institutions have denounced Russia’s interference.
