The Georgian Dream, the ruling party in Georgia, won the legislative elections with 54.08% of the vote, defeating the pro-European coalition, which refused to admit defeat, the Gregorian Central Electoral Commission announced today, reports Agence France Presse.
This morning, at a press conference, the president of that electoral body announced the victory of the party of Prime Minister Irakli Kobajidze, stating that the opposition had obtained 37.58% of the vote (the Coalition for Change had 10.8%, Unity - formed by the United National Movement (UNM), founded by the imprisoned former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and the Renaissance Strategy party reached 10.12% and the Strong Georgia and Gajaria for Georgia parties obtained 8.78% and 7.76%, respectively).
On Saturday night, following the first results of the elections, the opposition contested the victory of the Georgian Dream, considering that there were "distorted results".
"We do not recognize distorted results of stolen elections", declared the leader of the MNU, Tina Bokuchava, while the leader of the Akhali party denounced "a usurpation of power and a constitutional coup".
Today, in response and after the announcement of the Electoral Commission, the Georgian Prime Minister criticized the opposition and defended the "pro-European" future of the Caucasian nation.
"We knew that the opposition would not have the dignity to resign itself to defeat, but this has become a tradition," Irakli Kobajidze said at a press conference, as quoted by France Press, referring to the political crisis that erupted in the last parliamentary elections in 2020, when the opposition also rejected the Georgian Dream, which has been in power since 2012.
According to Kobajidze, the opposition has been "deceiving its voters, telling them that it was winning the elections", assuring that the voting system implemented "completely excludes" the possibility of electoral fraud and manipulation of results.
The Georgian Prime Minister also considered the opposition's attempts to undermine the constitutional order "unacceptable" and reiterated the Georgian Dream's attachment to the "European future" and peace.
"This election was like a referendum in which peace was decided, and the choice was the only one possible and without alternatives in favor of peace and the European future," he said, describing the results achieved by the Georgian Dream in the elections as 'impressive'.
Brussels has already warned that the accession to the European Union of Georgia, a former Soviet republic in the Caucasus with around four million inhabitants, depended on the results of the elections, after the country was the scene of large demonstrations in May against a law on "foreign influence", inspired by the Russian legislation on "foreign agents", used to crush civil society.
That legislative option led Brussels to freeze Georgia's accession process to the EU and the United States to impose sanctions on Georgian officials.
Another source of tension with the West is the recent enactment of a law that severely restricts the rights of LGBT+ people in this country with an Orthodox Christian tradition, where hostility towards sexual minorities remains strong.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader to remain close to Moscow, was the first foreign leader to react to the Georgian election results, calling the ruling party a "landing victory", while the President of neighboring Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, congratulated outgoing Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on his party's victory.
