She did not recognize the result, she said in Tbilisi and called for protests on Monday. The ruling Georgian Dream party has been officially declared the winner of the election in the South Caucasus republic.
The opposition alliance with the most votes in the parliamentary election in Georgia does not want to take up its mandate due to suspicion of electoral fraud. The electoral commission declared the ruling party of the country’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, the winner with around 54 percent of the vote. The opposition blocs do not recognize the result.
“I do not recognize the election results,” Zurabishvili said on Sunday. Saturday’s election, which according to official results was won by the pro-Moscow ruling party Georgian Dream, was a “total fraud.”
Call for mass protests
Zurabishvili called for mass protests on Monday. “We are witnesses and victims of a Russian special operation, a modern form of hybrid war against the Georgian people,” she said, without specifying these allegations.
The imprisoned Georgian opposition politician Mikhail Saakashvili had previously called for widespread protests. “Now is the time for mass protests,” said the former head of government on the online network Facebook. “We must show the world that we are fighting for freedom and that we are a people that will not tolerate injustice,” wrote Saakashvili, who belongs to the main opposition UNM party.
EU Council President Charles Michel called on electoral authorities in Georgia to quickly investigate suspected election irregularities. The central electoral commission and other responsible authorities should “fulfill their duty and investigate and evaluate the irregularities in the elections and the related allegations quickly, transparently and independently,” wrote Michel in the online service X, with reference to reports from international election observers.
The election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and NATO reported in a joint statement that the vote was disrupted by “inequalities (between the candidates), pressure and tensions”. They expressed doubts about the official result.
On Sunday, after counting the votes in more than 99 percent of the constituencies, the electoral commission declared the ruling Georgian Dream party the winner with 54 percent of the votes, while the pro-Western opposition alliance got 37.58 percent. The alliance describes the official results as “falsified” and claims victory in the election.