The Georgian elections have come to a close. After a preliminary tally of 99 per cent of the votes, the ruling Georgian Dream Party was found to have received more than 54 per cent of the vote, while the pro-European opposition coalition received some 37 per cent, the Election Commission said on Sunday.
Georgia’s elections this time went differently from previous times thanks to the use of electronic ballot boxes, enabling the votes of 90 per cent of voters to be counted in a quick manner. The voting process was fully automated. A tape with a printout of the results was simply pulled out of the ballot box at the appointed hour and shown to everyone.
In spite of this, the election process did not go smoothly and quietly everywhere. The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, an independent Georgian election observation group founded in 1995, said it documented numerous irregularities and incidents of violence near several polling stations.
Some cities encountered voters picking fights and attempting to blatantly throw in fake ballots. On social media, a video circulated showing a man throwing several ballots into a ballot box in Marneuli, in southern Georgia’s Kvemo Kartli region, with a population of about 25,000. The votes were later ruled invalid.
The Georgian Dream’s victory sparked a number of dissenting voices. Police went on high alert after the opposition parties questioned the election results at a press conference early Sunday morning. The leader of the opposition Coalition for Change Party, Elene Khoshtaria, said the election was “stolen” and they would not accept it, while Strong Georgia said it did not trust the results of the past parliamentary elections.
However, Georgia may face protests in the coming days. The current precarious situation in the country is likely to resemble the aftermath of the previous parliamentary elections in 2020, when the opposition refused to recognise the results and boycotted hearings of the new parliament for more than five months.
