Georgia elections, pro-Russia win. EU membership becomes a mirage –

An announced victory that now distances Georgia from the path of EU membership. The Tbilisi Election Commission today announced the final results of the legislative elections: the Georgian Dream obtained 54.08% of the votes, against 37.58% of the pro-European coalition, according to the count carried out in more than 99% of constituencies . During the night, the opposition had refused to admit defeat. “We do not recognize the distorted results of stolen elections,” Tina Bokoutchava, head of the United National Movement (UNM), one of the four parties of the opposition coalition, declared in a press conference. Denouncing “a usurpation of power and a constitutional coup”, Nika Gvaramia, leader of the Akhali party, assured that the opposition had “deciphered the scheme of falsification” of the vote.

The pro-European parties accuse the majority party, in existence since 2012, of pro-Russian authoritarianism and of distancing the country from the EU and NATO, which it would also like to join. The government had declared before the vote that it wanted to obtain three-quarters of the seats in Parliament, an indispensable level to amend the Constitution and, according to plan, ban pro-Western opposition parties. “As the results made public by the central electoral commission demonstrate, the Georgian Dream has obtained a solid majority,” the party’s executive secretary, Mamuka Mdinaradze, told journalists last night. Brussels had warned that Georgia’s chances of joining the European Union will depend on these elections.

Georgia was rocked in May by large protests against a law on “foreign influence”, inspired by Russian legislation on “foreign agents” used to crush civil society. The EU had then frozen the accession process, just as the United States had adopted sanctions against Georgian officials. Another reason for tension with Westerners: the recent promulgation of a law that severely limits the rights of LGBT+ people in a country of Orthodox Christian tradition where hostility towards sexual minorities remains strong. Among the first leaders to comment on the election result was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader who remained close to Moscow, who welcomed the “overwhelming” victory of the governing party. The president of neighboring Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev also congratulated the outgoing prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze on his party’s victory. Monitored by international observers, the vote was marked by several incidents, widely disseminated online, such as the video of a fight at a polling station in Tbilisi, scuffles at the headquarters of the United National Movement or that of a man inserting several ballots into the ballot box at the time of voting.