ReutersGeorgia’s ruling party is leading a pivotal election focused on the country’s future path in Europe, according to preliminary results.
The Georgian Dream party of billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili is on 53%, based on a count of more than 70% of the vote, the central election commission says.
The increasingly authoritarian party and four pro-EU opposition groups trying to end its 12 years in power had earlier both claimed victory based on competing exit polls.
Georgians turned out in big numbers on Saturday in this South Caucasus state bordering Russia, and there were numerous reports of vote violations and violence outside polling stations.
One opposition official in a town south of the capital Tbilisi told the BBC that he was beaten up first by a local Georgian Dream councillor, and then “another 10 men came and I didn’t know what was happening to me”.
The opposition has described this high-stakes vote as a choice between Europe or Russia. Many saw the vote as the most crucial since Georgians backed independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Matthew Goddard/BBCAs soon as voting ended, an exit poll for pro-opposition TV channels gave Georgian Dream 40.9% of the vote, with the total for the combined four opposition groups put at 51.9%. But a poll for the big, government-supporting Imedi TV channel gave Georgian Dream 56%.
Some time later, the central election commission (CEC) came out with the first projections. The CEC has come under criticism for being too close to the government and for rushing through electoral reform ahead of the election without sufficient consultation.
If the projection is confirmed, Georgian Dream will secure a majority in parliament, dashing the opposition’s hope of security a coalition made up of four blocs.
Under Georgia’s new system of proportional representation, whoever wins half the vote wins half of the 150 seats.
Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, told supporters it was a “rare occasion in the world for the same party to achieve such success in such a difficult situation”.
However, opposition leaders had a very different take.
Tina Bokuchava of the biggest opposition party, the United National Movement said: “We believe the Georgian public have voted clearly for a future at the heart of Europe and no amount of posturing will change that.”
“This is the moment. In future there may be no such moment,” opposition voter Levan Benidze, 36, told the BBC. “I know there are a lot of geopolitical risks – from Russia – but this could be the pivotal moment, a turning point.”
VANO SHLAMOV/AFPAlthough Georgia was made a candidate to join the European Union last December, that move has since been frozen by the EU because of “democratic backsliding – in particular a Russian-style “foreign influence” law targeting groups receiving Western funding.
The USSR may have ceased to exist more than three decades ago, but Moscow still considers much of the old Soviet empire its own backyard and Russia’s sphere of influence.
It will have appreciated Georgian Dream’s campaign promise of a “pragmatic” Russia policy, not to mention Brussels’ decision earlier this year to halt Georgia’s EU accession process.
Georgian Dream has promised voters they are still on course to join the EU, but it has also accused the opposition of helping the West to open a new front in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Georgia’s Russian neighbour still occupies 20% of its territory after a five-day war in 2008.
Bidzina Ivanishvili’s rhetoric has become increasingly anti-Western, indicating that a fourth term for Georgian Dream might pull the country back into Russia’s orbit.
Georgians had a simple choice, the party’s founder said after voting in Tbilisi: either a government that served them, or an opposition of “foreign agents, who will carry out only the orders of a foreign country”.
He has repeatedly spoken of a “global war party” pushing the opposition towards joining the war in Ukraine, with Georgian Dream (GD) cast as the party of peace. For many voters the message has worked.
“The most important thing – for me, my family, my grandchildren – is peace that I wish for all Georgians,” GD voter Tinatin Gvelesiani, 55, told the BBC at a polling station in Kojori, south-west of the capital. “Only Georgian Dream” would bring peace, she added.
Election observers reported a string of violations across the country, from ballot stuffing inside polling stations to intimidation of voters outside.
With less than an hour to go before the polls closed, pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili appealed to opposition voters not to be intimidated.
“Don’t get scared. All this is just psychological pressure on you,” she said in a live address on social media.
The intimidation turned into violence for Azat Karimov, 35, the local chair of the biggest opposition party United National Movement in Marneuli south of Tbilisi.
He told the BBC how he was set upon when his team tried to investigate votes being falsified by Georgian Dream officials. He also alleged that voters were being bribed to back the governing party.
“[A Georgian Dream councillor]came with 10-20 people… before police could come I told him to calm down. Right away the councillor started beating me.”
On the eve of the vote, a Georgian monitoring group highlighted a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at the election.
The Kremlin has denied meddling in Georgia’s domestic affairs and alleged instead that the West had made “unprecedented attempts” at interference.
Earlier this year Sergei Naryshkin, director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, accused the United States of planning a “Colour Revolution” in Georgia.
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