Georgia ruling party wins election, says poll body amid opposition protests

Result ensures Georgian Dream’s power of 150-seat parliament, but it is abbreviated of an implicit bulk to alteration constitution.

Georgia’s governing Georgian Dream enactment has won the country’s parliamentary election, says the electoral commission, amid protests from pro-Western absorption that denounced the ballot arsenic a “constitutional coup”.

With much than 99 percent of the precincts counted connected Sunday, the governing enactment received much than 54 percent of the ballot, cardinal predetermination committee seat Giorgi Kalandarishvili told a quality conference.

The 4 absorption parties received much than 37 percent of the vote, with the Coalition for Change receiving the largest portion astatine 10.822 percent, according to the Georgia Today quality website.

Based connected preliminary estimates, the Georgian Dream triumph ensures it 89 seats successful the 150-member parliament – capable to govern but abbreviated of the absolute majority it wants to marque sweeping law changes.

The results are seen arsenic a stroke to pro-Western Georgians, who had formed the predetermination arsenic a prime betwixt a governing enactment that has deepened ties with Russia, and an absorption that had hoped to fast-track integration with the European Union.

Brussels had warned that Saturday’s vote, seen arsenic a important trial of ideology successful the Caucasus country, would find the EU candidate’s chances of joining the bloc.

Opposition parties said they did not recognise the result of the elections, calling them “fraudulent”.

Tina Bokuchava, person of the absorption United National Movement (UNM), which campaigned connected a pro-European platform, said the results were “falsified” and the predetermination “stolen”.

“This is an effort to bargain Georgia’s future,” she said, declaring that the UNM did not judge the results.

Nika Gvaramia, person of the Ahali party, called the mode the ballot was held “a law coup” by the government. “Georgian Dream volition not enactment successful power,” helium said.

Pro-opposition Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili besides said determination had been “deeply troubling incidents of violence” astatine immoderate polling stations.

One Georgian monitoring organisation called for the results to beryllium annulled, based connected reports of elector intimidation and ballot buying, but it did not instantly supply grounds of large-scale falsification.

A video circulating connected societal media besides showed a antheral stuffing a ballot with respective papers, portion scuffling with predetermination workers. Another clip showed predetermination observers being attacked by unidentified men.

Several section and planetary monitoring organisations, including the Organisation for Security and Co-operation successful Europe (OSCE), are expected to remark connected the results aboriginal connected Sunday.

Demonstrators march during an absorption rally successful Tbilisi [Zurab Tsertsvadze/AP]

Georgian Dream’s reclusive billionaire laminitis Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had campaigned heavy connected keeping Georgia retired of the warfare successful Ukraine, hailed the effect of the vote, with his enactment putting successful its strongest show since 2012 connected the backmost of immense margins of up to 90 percent successful immoderate agrarian areas.

“It is simply a uncommon lawsuit successful the satellite that the aforesaid enactment achieves specified occurrence successful specified a hard concern – this is simply a bully indicator of the endowment of the Georgian people,” Ivanishvili told cheering supporters connected Saturday night.

Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream says it wants Georgia to articulation the EU, though Brussels says the country’s rank exertion is frozen implicit what it says is Georgian Dream’s “authoritarian” tendencies.

Its run centred connected a conspiracy mentation astir a “global warfare party” that controls Western institutions and is seeking to resistance Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war. In a state scarred by Russia’s 2008 invasion, the enactment has sold stories to voters astir an imminent menace of war, which the Georgian Dream said it could prevent.

Tamta Kukhaleishvili, a voter, told Al Jazeera that governmental developments happening successful caller years bespeak that the state “is moving towards Russia and against democracy”.

“For me, it’s not a state I privation to unrecorded in,” she said.

Source

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Al Jazeera and quality agencies