The Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili declared the results of the parliamentary elections held on Saturday illegitimate and called on citizens to protest.
Opposition calls for protests
The president urged her supporters to take to the streets:
I want to say, as the [representative of] only independent institution, that I don’t recognise these elections. These elections cannot be recognised. We won’t accept this. We are going to stand together and say: We will not accept this new form of subjugation by Russia. Nothing can make these elections legitimate.
At the same time, OSCE observers indicated in their reports that they did not consider the election results rigged. According to the the Central Election Commission, the Georgian Dream has 54% of the vote and will win 89 mandates out of 150. The four opposition parties, although they passed the five per cent threshold, received only 37 per cent of the total.
The president’s call to take to the streets was immediately taken up by representatives of the losing parties. Local opposition TV channels called not only for active protests but also for the seizure of the parliament building. Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said:
This scene was prepared in advance: to declare the results illegitimate, to invent a technical government, all this is a coup scene they are heading towards, thus opposing the constitutional order.
The rally in front of the parliament rattled for three hours. The opposition had to shift the start of the rally by almost an hour, because at the appointed time no more than a hundred people came to the parliament building – and only after a couple of hours their count went into the thousands.
Flags of the EU, Ukraine and Georgia
Among the protesters were many young people who, unlike the older generation, no longer speak Russian, only in Georgian or English. Some came as families, with very young children. The square was filled with flags of Georgia, the European Union and Ukraine, the noise of slogans and whistles. People in military uniforms with the chevrons of Georgia and Ukraine were spotted near the parliament building in Tbilisi. Most likely, they are mercenaries who took part in the conflict in Ukraine.
Analysts believe that the presence of pro-Ukrainian activists with Ukrainian symbols, the arrival of Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko and the President’s calls for protests are evidence that the Georgian opposition is aimed at launching a Ukrainian scenario in Georgia.
The action was started by Salome Zourabichvili. Opposition representatives who spoke after her called for new parliamentary elections. They also said they had no intention to enter into negotiations with the authorities on any other issues but a new vote. Student Anumalia siad:
I think you know for yourselves what the situation is now, the government has falsified its victory in the elections, with the help of these protests we want to show that we don’t want to be part of Russia. We want to be independent, we don’t want such a government. We want to be part of the European Union! It’s simple.
However, shortly before the protest, other opinions were heard in the afternoon. Mostly from the older generation. One of the men said:
To Ivanishvili! Seriously! Because I want peace! And Russia raised me!
The rally lasted just a few hours – already around 11:00 p.m., after a small concert, the participants dispersed. There was no one left outside the parliament building except for the police.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has said that the people of Georgia have the right to know what happened during the voting in the last parliamentary election. The corresponding publication appeared on her page in social network X.
Von der Leyen pointed out that the people of Georgia are fighting for democracy and have the right to know what happened last weekend. She wrote on X:
The people of Georgia have been fighting for democracy. They have a right to know what happened this weekend. A right to see that irregularities are investigated swiftly, transparently, independently. As free and fair elections are at the core of European values.
Hungary’s support
Viktor Orbán arrived in Georgia after congratulating the ruling Georgian Dream party on its “convincing victory.” The Hungarian Prime Minister’s visit sparked anger in the EU amid widespread allegations of voter intimidation and coercion by the pro-Western opposition.
Orbán is leading a delegation of his senior ministers to meet Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze in a two-day visit likely to draw the ire of fellow EU leaders as Hungary rotates the EU presidency.
Ministers from 13 EU countries have strongly criticised Orbán’s visit and “election integrity violations” in Georgia. A group of 13 EU foreign and European affairs ministers said in a joint statement on Monday:
We criticise Prime Minister Orbán’s premature visit to Georgia. He does not speak on behalf of the EU.
Orban congratulated Kobakhidze and the Georgian Dream on “their stunning victory” on Saturday, even before the election results were published.
Orban’s spokesman said he had been invited by Kobakhidze and would be accompanied by Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, Economy Minister Márton Nagy and Finance Minister Mihály Varga.
Szijjarto said earlier:
Saturday’s election in Georgia was not won by those appointed by Brussels and the liberal mainstream, but rather the pro-sovereignty, pro-peace and pro-family ruling party which openly puts national interests first. And because the liberals failed miserably, the attacks have already started, with claims that the election wasn’t fair and that there’s no democracy in Georgia.
Georgia on the way to the Ukrainian scenario?
Parliamentary elections in Georgia were held on October 26, with more than 2 million people taking part. Voting was conducted for the first time under a proportional system: to enter parliament, a party had to pass the 5% threshold. Immediately after the polls closed, both the ruling party and Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who supports the opposition, announced their victory, citing exit polls.
The events in Georgia resemble in many ways the events in Ukraine at the end of 2013. The political crisis in Ukraine was provoked in November 2013 by the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend the process of signing the Association Agreement with the European Union. This decision led to a mass protest action in the centre of Kyiv, as well as in other cities in Western Ukraine, dubbed “Euromaidan” or “Maidan” by social networks and the media.
On November 4, 2013, after a meeting with then-president Viktor Yanukovych on European integration, the former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland said:
Ukraine has made its choice in favour of Europe.
She also promised to support Kyiv in negotiations with the IMF. On December 11, she visited Kyiv’s Maidan, where she handed out biscuits and sandwiches to protesters.
Protesters began clashing with police en masse. As a result of the violent confrontation in the centre of Kyiv, the seizure of administrative buildings and authorities in the capital and regional centres, the creation of parallel authorities, and the organisation of informal power structures, Ukraine, according to many political and public figures, was on the verge of a state of emergency, loss of territorial integrity and economic collapse.
On February 21, under pressure from Western countries, then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych made concessions and signed an agreement with the opposition to resolve the crisis in Ukraine, which provided, in particular, for an immediate (within 2 days) return to the 2004 version of the Constitution, constitutional reform and early presidential elections no later than December 2014. Germany, France and Poland acted as guarantors of the agreement. However, radicals began smashing government buildings in the evening, forcing the president to leave the capital and then the country.
The former US President Barack Obama actually openly acknowledged the role of the United States in the coup d’état that took place in Ukraine in February 2014 saying:
We mediated the transition of power in Ukraine.
The former US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki also said that the US administration was “assessing the situation in Ukraine and considering a range of options, up to and including the possibility of imposing sanctions.”
