EU membership moves away from victory for power

Photo: Vano Shlamov Agence France-Presse Tina Bokuchava, chairwoman of the opposition party, delivers a speech at a rally at the party headquarters.

Romain Colas – Agence France-Presse

Published at 11:41 Updated at 15:03

• Europe

The ruling Georgian Dream party is on track to win Georgia’s parliamentary elections against the pro-European opposition, according to partial results, a verdict that threatens to undermine the small Caucasus country’s ambitions to join the European Union.

After counting ballots from 70% of polling stations, the Georgian Dream party, which the opposition accuses of pro-Russian authoritarianism, won 53% of the vote compared to 38.28% for a coalition of four pro-European parties, according to results released by the Central Election Commission (CEC).

“As the results released by the Central Election Commission show, the Georgian Dream has secured a solid majority” in the new parliament, the party’s executive secretary Mamuka told reporters. Mdinaradze.

Based on a poll by the American Edison Research institute conducted for a television channel that supports the opposition, President Salome Zurabishvili, who has broken with the Georgian Dream government, had previously announced its defeat and the victory of “European Georgia,” “despite attempts to rig the vote.”

The first foreign official to react, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader to remain close to Moscow, hailed the “crushing” victory of the ruling party.

Brussels warned that the outcome of these elections would determine the chances of this former Soviet republic in the Caucasus, with a population of around four million, joining the EU, which has enshrined this aspiration in its Constitution.

After voting, Salome Zourabichvili warned that this election would “determine the future of the country.”

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“Holding on to power”

Monitored by international observers, the election was marked by several incidents, widely relayed online, such as this video of a fight in a polling station in Tbilisi or scuffles at the headquarters of the United National Movement, one of the four pro-Western parties in the coalition.

Images appearing to show ballot stuffing in Sadakhlo, a village in the east, were widely shared by the opposition. The electoral commission canceled the ballots in this station.

Tina Bokoutchava, leader of the United National Movement, one of the four parties in the opposition coalition, accused the “thugs” of the Georgian Dream of “clinging to power” and “undermining the electoral process” during the day, remarks rejected by this party, led by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili.

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The United National Movement is the party of the imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili, a sworn enemy of Mr. Ivanishvili.

In Tbilisi, Giga Abouladze explains that he chose the Georgian Dream because it works “for the people” and that it is necessary to be “friends” with Europe but also with Moscow.

“Of course I voted for Europe, because I want to live in Europe, not in Russia. So I voted for change,” said Alexandre Gouldani, an 18-year-old student who made the opposite choice.

The opposition alliance, which had promised electoral and judicial reforms and the repeal of recently enacted discredited laws, accuses the Georgian Dream of having embarked on a spiral towards a pro-Russian authoritarian regime and of distancing Georgia from the European Union and NATO, which it also aims to join.

Fear of “Ukrainization”

Some of its leaders are very critical of the West. Bidzina Ivanishvili called it a “world war party” that would treat its victim Georgia as “cannon fodder.”

This country on the Black Sea remains deeply scarred by a brief war in 2008 with the Russian army.

At the end of the war, Russia set up military bases in two Georgian separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, whose unilaterally proclaimed independence it recognized.

In this context, the Georgian Dream campaigned by presenting itself as the only one capable of preventing a supposed “Ukrainization” of Georgia.

Before the election, the government said it wanted to obtain three-quarters of the seats in Parliament, which would put it in a position to amend the Constitution and, under its plan, to ban pro-Western opposition parties.

Georgia was rocked in May by mass protests against a “foreign influence” law, modelled on Russian “foreign agents” legislation used to crush civil society.

Brussels subsequently froze Georgia’s EU accession process and the United States imposed sanctions on Georgian officials.

Another source of tension with the West is the recent enactment of a law severely restricting the rights of LGBT+ people in this traditionally Orthodox Christian country where hostility towards sexual minorities remains strong.