The ruling party in Georgia for 12 years, the populist Georgian Dream (SG), leads the scrutiny in the parliamentary elections of the caucasian countryaccording to provisional data offered by the Central Electoral Commission. With information from the provisional electronic count of 71% of the polling stations, SG would have taken 53% of the votes for 39% of the four main opposition electoral coalitions, which would allow the ruling party to renew its absolute majority. However, opposition sources consulted by EL PAÍS asked for patience, since the official count – which is done by hand – will continue throughout the night and the votes of the diaspora still need to be counted in key elections in which Georgia is at stake. its eventual accession to the EU after the Government’s rapprochement with Russia. In addition, opponents denounce irregularities throughout voting day.
The leaders of Georgian Dream, including its founder, the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, and the prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, appeared after the polls closed on a stage prepared next to the party headquarters in Tbilisi, where they joyfully proclaimed themselves winners. and laughter, emphasizing that this is a triumph of “traditional and Christian values.” “I assure voters that although there are wealthier nations with older democracies, our society is as capable as them. It is essential that we understand who to trust and where to take the country. I assure you that in the next four years we will achieve many things,” said Ivanishvili, the richest man in the country and number one on the SG charts. The Hungarian Prime Minister, the ultra-conservative Viktor Orbán, ran to congratulate the Georgian party for his “overwhelming victory” without even waiting for the first official results; and so did Margarita Simonyan, director of the Russian television network RT and Kremlin propagandist.
However, a source from the Coalition for Change, the second most voted according to preliminary data, explained to this newspaper that he does not trust the data from the Electoral Commission and that his observers are collecting information from the manual count. The same was highlighted by another source from the United National Movement, who said that in the parallel count carried out by its observers, with around 20% of votes counted, both the opposition and the Government party had around 49%.
At the close of the polls, both the Government and the opposition had declared themselves winners of the elections following different exit polls that gave completely contradictory results, depending on the side to which the media that commissioned them are attached. Even the country’s president, Salomé Zurabishviliwho had established herself as coordinator of the divided opposition and had gotten it to sign a minimum program in the event of victory, stated that “European Georgia is winning with 52% of the votes despite attempts to rig the elections.” These were elections held in the midst of strong political polarization, which the opposition had presented as a plebiscite between Europe and Russia, given the anti-Western discourse of the Executive in recent years and its increasingly authoritarian driftwhich has led the European Union to freeze Georgia’s accession process just a few months after granting it candidate country status last December. The ruling party, for its part, had defined these elections as a referendum between peace and waraccusing the opposition of wanting to drag the country into an armed confrontation with Russia.
More pessimistic than other opposition representatives, Marika Mikiashvili, also from the Coalition for Change, wrote on the social network X: “The opposition will coordinate to decide what their next steps are, much will depend on evidence of fraud. The evaluation of Western observers and governments will be vital. “There is a lot at stake.”
For the first time, Georgia launched a fully proportional seat distribution system and an electronic voting management system. The company selected for this was Smartmatic, a multinational of Venezuelan origin that has managed electoral processes in various countries around the world—in some, such as the Philippines, with some controversy—and that left Venezuela in 2017 after denounce that the Government of Nicolás Maduro had manipulated the participation data of the elections to the National Constituent Assembly.
Upon arrival at the polling station (in 90% of the centers that had this system), the identity of the voters was checked at a table, by inserting their card into a machine in which data and a photograph appeared. Subsequently, they were given a ballot in which they had to indicate their electoral preference and which was deposited in an electronic ballot box, which issued a voting receipt and counted the vote, although without revealing the results until the end of the day. Subsequently, the voter’s finger was sprayed with a liquid only visible in ultraviolet light to prevent him from voting more than once. Once the schools closed, the electronic ballot boxes were opened and the manual count began, parallel to the electronic scrutiny.
“The procedure is being very clean. The mechanics are complicated, but very guaranteeing,” said an international observer consulted by EL PAÍS who visited a dozen polling stations in the west of the country. However, he also noted the “strong presence” of members of Georgian Dream and its satellite organizations.
This has been one of the biggest complaints of independent observers and the opposition: the intimidating activities of militants of the ruling party, who in some rural areas have been discovered trying to pay voters for their votes or intimidating them. “The legislation prohibits the presence of any person [fuera de quienes estén votando o estén acreditados como observadores o periodistas] less than 100 meters from the polling stations, and we have seen many unauthorized people trying to mobilize voters and collecting personal information from voters to intimidate them and control their election,” complained Nino Dolidze of the International Society for Free Elections and Democracy (ISFED). This NGO detected irregularities of varying severity in 15% of the polling stations observed, from pressure to the distribution of more than one ballot to voters.
The most serious of these irregularities occurred in the district of Marneuli (southern of the country), where an opposition observer recorded how another, also accredited, introduced a large number of ballots into the ballot box and a second one pushed them inside. The observer who recorded the images was beaten, but managed to broadcast the incident, which led the Ministry of the Interior to launch an investigation and the Electoral Commission to close this polling station.
In the same district, the local leader of the United National Movement was beaten. The group has reported attacks on its observers in several locations – one of whom had to be hospitalized – and the arrest of four of them.
Precisely in some of the districts where irregularities have been reported, the vote for the ruling party has ranged between 75% and 90%, according to preliminary data. In the aforementioned Marneuli, SG has obtained 80% of the votes, 30 points more than in the elections four years ago. In Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda, 89%, 22 points more. In Bolnisi, 81%, 23 points more.
Attacks, threats and violence
In a provisional report, My Vote observers – which includes around thirty pro-European NGOs – claimed to have detected cases of physical aggression, threats and violence in 38 districts, that is, approximately half of those in the country. “The severity and number of electoral violations in [las regiones de] Shida Kartli and Kverno Kartli, including lack of checks, obstruction of observers, misuse of liquid and marking devices and violence against observers and their expulsion from the premises, create a reasonable suspicion of systematic manipulation of the elections in these regions,” My Vote denounced.
Throughout the day, President Zurabishvili called on the police to intervene firmly in these situations and against those who tried to intimidate voters. The Ombudsman’s Office also collected reports on various episodes of violence and called on security forces to “study and evaluate all these alleged criminal incidents.” “The Ombudsman asks the leaders of all political parties and their followers to refrain from inciting and initiating any type of violence and to facilitate the electoral process being carried out peacefully,” he demanded.
