Election observers report anomalies observed in Georgia on Saturday

Photo: Giorgi Arjevanidze Agence France-Presse On Monday, tens of thousands of Georgians demonstrated in the capital Tbilisi, chanting that the election was stolen from them.

Magdaline Boutros

Published at 1:22 p.m. Updated at 4:45 p.m.

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Ballot stuffing, physical altercations, pressure on voters: observers who monitored Saturday’s elections in Georgia reported to Devoir the anomalies they observed.

MEP Antonio López-Istúriz White was leading the international observation mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), composed of eight European parliamentarians affiliated with different political parties.

“We were divided into three teams,” he explained in an interview. “One of them witnessed ballot stuffing in a ballot box [in Marneuli], followed by an altercation with an observer who wanted to report the stuffing. The polling station then closed.” The incident was filmed and then posted online.

The European People’s Party MEP said he also personally observed incidents or chaotic scenes in “one or two polling stations.” “I saw the chairwoman of one of the polling stations subtly indicating to people what to vote for,” he said.

Mr. Lopez-Istúriz recalls that for the first time on Saturday, Georgians were voting using a fully proportional system, and electronic voting machines were in place. “So there were a lot of people asking questions, and this lady was systematically telling them how to vote for the ruling party [Georgian Dream].”

Several unidentified election observers were also present and “meddling in,” Mr. Lopez-Istúriz adds. “We understood that they were part of phantom NGOs created for the occasion. [Eventually] they admitted that they were affiliated with the ruling party.” »

The Spanish MP, who says he is concerned about the democratic decline observed in Georgia, nevertheless mentions that he did not observe irregularities in all the polling stations visited.

Claims

Georgian Dream — which has taken an authoritarian turn in recent months, according to its detractors — has been claiming victory since Sunday, proclaiming that it won 53.92% of the vote, against 37.78% for the opposition.

The party of the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, accused of being close to Moscow, repeated during the campaign that it was the only bulwark to protect the country from a war against Russia and thus prevent a military invasion like the one currently taking place in Ukraine. The opposition — one of whose leading figures is the former president Mikheil Saakashvili, now in prison — has instead presented this election as a referendum on a rapprochement with Russia (if Georgian Dream is brought to power) or a rapprochement with Europe (if one of the four opposition parties is elected).

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In recent days, both the member states of the European Union (EU) and the United States have criticized the conduct of Saturday's election and called on the Georgian government to investigate “significant irregularities.”

To calm things down, Georgia’s Election Commission announced Tuesday that it would conduct a recount in 14 percent of polling stations. The recount will take place “in five randomly selected polling stations in each constituency,” it said.

Negotiations

Salome Kandelaki, an analyst at the Georgian Institute of Politics, was also on the ground Saturday as a mobile election observer. She said she witnessed several irregularities at a polling station in Tbilisi, including the lack of systematic verification of voter IDs and the unjustified rejection of some ballots.

During the vote counting, Ms Kandelaki said she observed strange dealings between the scrutineers at one polling station and men posted outside. “The most disturbing episode was when these two men entered a few minutes after the Council of Europe observer had left. It is important to note that the procedural part [of the count] had not yet been finalized at this time,” she wrote in a description of her observations posted on her Facebook page and to which she directed Le Devoir.

The men then allegedly claimed to have been mandated by a Georgian Dream MP to transport the ballots and sealed voting machines to the offices of the Georgia Election Commission.

Protests

These irregularities, like others, have raised tensions on the streets of the former Soviet republic. On Monday, tens of thousands of Georgians demonstrated in the capital Tbilisi, chanting that the election was stolen from them.

Breaking with the government, the country's president, former French diplomat Salome Zurabishvili, has repeated since Sunday on several platforms that methods similar to those used in Russia were used to “falsify” the vote. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday rejected these “unfounded” accusations of Russian interference in the electoral process in Georgia, accusing instead President Zurabishvili of destabilizing the country.

Faced with the crisis, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, close to Vladimir Putin, arrived in Georgia on Monday to support the Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012. A gesture seen as a revolt against the European Union (EU), of which Hungary holds the rotating presidency.

The Hungarian leader described Saturday's elections as “free and democratic”. “If the liberals had won”, Brussels “would say it was democratic”, he declared in a provocative tone.

For his part, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze assured on Monday that Tbilisi's “main priority” remained “European integration”. He added that he “expects a restart of relations” with the EU after the tensions of recent months.

This avenue, however, seems unlikely. In the spring, Brussels froze Georgia’s EU accession process following the promulgation of the controversial “foreign influence” law, inspired by Russian legislation used by the Kremlin to crush civil society.

Read also

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