Episode 188
GEORGIA: Parliamentary Election Results & more – 31st Oct 2024
The parliamentary election results, Victor Orban in Tbilisi, Sweden cutting ties with Georgia, an election fraud scheme, a rally, and much more!
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Transcript
Gamarjobat from Gracia! This is the Rorshok Georgia Update from the 31st of October twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Georgia.
The parliamentary elections took place on Saturday, the 26th. The expectation that the Georgian Dream or Otsneba would end its twelve-year run in government did not materialize. While Otsneba did not achieve the constitutional majority it longed for, which would have granted it the power to rewrite the constitution, the party comfortably secured fifty-five percent of the votes.
All four major opposition parties underperformed, but managed to overcome the five percent entry barrier. The Coalition for Change - Gvaramia, Melia, Girchi, Droa or Tsvlilebebistvis, received eleven percent of the vote; the United National Movement, or Natsebi, garnered ten percent; the Coalition Strong Georgia, or Dzliero Lelo, achieved almost nine percent; and Gakharia For Georgia, or Sakartvelostvis, fell just under eight percent. No other party managed to cross the five percent threshold and receive a parliamentary mandate.
According to the results published by the Election Administration, Otsneba won the election primarily due to the high percentage of votes it received outside big cities, where in some cases, it secured over seventy and eighty percent of the votes. In Tbilisi Otsneba had its worst results. This outcome was unusual for Georgia, as typically, the party that wins Tbilisi wins the overall election. Otsneba also lost significantly among immigrants, receiving around fifteen percent of the votes from those voting outside the country. Voter turnout reached its highest level since twenty twelve, with over two million people casting their votes. Unfortunately for the opposition, the number of votes for Otsneba was also the highest since twenty twelve.
The day after the elections, all four opposition parties and Salome Zourabishvili, Georgia’s President, declared the elections illegitimate. They said that there were instances of outright election fraud, bribery, threats, and duress both before and during the election process, saying the results were unrepresentative of the will of the Georgian people. They called on their voters to attend a rally the following day to demonstrate that their voices had been stolen. Their call resonated, and despite clear demoralization among opposition voters, tens of thousands of Georgians showed up on Rustaveli Avenue. In their speeches to the crowd, the political parties promised to boycott parliament and refuse the mandate granted to them in the elections. In her speech, Zourabishvili stated that recognizing these elections would amount to acknowledging a Russian takeover of the country.
On Wednesday, the 30th, the Prosecutor’s Office summoned the President to question her election fraud claims. The president publicly refused the summons and demanded the Prosecutor's office stop playing political games and concentrate on gathering evidence.
The rally held on Monday the 28th coincided with the visit of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Tbilisi. He was the first to congratulate Otsneba on its victory. Orban remains the only leader of an EU country allied with the Georgian ruling party. A video circulated on social media showing him coming out of the hotel and encountering Georgians heading to the opposition rally set on the same street. He faced boos and disapproving shouts before quickly leaving the scene.
Other foreign politicians who recognized the elections were Nicolás Maduro, the President of Venezuela, who remains in power despite facing accusations of holding illegitimate elections himself, and congratulated the winners. Venezuela is also one of the few countries that recognizes the independence of Georgia’s two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey soon followed. On a more global scale, China granted support to the legitimacy of elections. Russian state propagandists Margarita Simonyan and Aleksander Dugin were also quick to congratulate Otsneba.
Western reaction to the elections was much more critical. On Sunday, 27th, Charles Michel, the President of the European Council, called for an investigation into all the alleged cases of election fraud and stated that Georgia’s election will be discussed during the informal meeting of the European Council in November. He also mentioned that the council would decide what steps to take next and how to proceed with its relationship with Georgia.
On the same day, a similar statement came from Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In a joint statement with the European Commission, Borrell emphasized that the Georgian Election Administration must act swiftly, transparently, and independently to investigate all allegations of fraud and restore faith in the election process.
According to the article shared by the Sweden Herald on Tuesday, 29th, the Swedish government will stop any cooperation with the Georgia government. Sweden will also allocate twenty-five million Krona, which is around 2.3 million dollars, in support of Georgia’s civil society. These steps will be taken as an answer to alleged election fraud and attacks on civil society.
Speaking of election fraud, on Monday, 28th, the local election observer mission My Vote for EU said that it uncovered an election fraud scheme and had over 370 photos and video evidence proving that. According to them, fraudulent voters showed up at polling stations with a piece of paper in their passport with ID numbers of other people. The registrars, who were their accomplices, entered these ID numbers into their system manually. So these people could vote several times, depending on the number of ID numbers they had.
Schemes became possible because the registrars were not randomly selected, and the marking procedure that is supposed to safeguard elections from people voting several times was not universally applied.
Also, before the elections, there were allegations circulating in the media saying that Otsneba’s party activists were either paying people in regions for their IDs or threatening them to get one. This might be the way fraudsters were able to get ID information of people, who did not show up to vote.
Next up, on Thursday, the 31st, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy held a briefing. They stated that due to violations of fundamental electoral principles, the election results couldn’t be recognized as a true reflection of the will of the Georgian people. With 1,000 observers stationed at polling places and an additional 230 outside, they reported a total of 490 violations. Most of them involved attempts by individuals to vote multiple times, restrictions on the rights of observers, their expulsion from several polling stations, improper marking techniques, and breaches of anonymous voting procedures.
On Tuesday, the 29th, Gogi Gakharia, the leader of Sakartvelostvis, demanded that the Election Administration make information available to everyone on who voted, in which district, and at what time they voted. According to him, this will make it clear whether the number of people who actually attended elections and the number of votes that were counted are the same.
Since we mentioned the Election Administration, on Wednesday the 30th, they held a special briefing, where its representatives talked about a stream of insults, threats and bullying that had been directed against them after the elections. They shared screenshots of comments on their social media pages as evidence and said that any messages and calls they receive that break the law will be redirected to law enforcement authorities.
Last week, we reported that Eto Buziashvili and Sopho Gelava, two researchers from the Atlantic Council, an American think tank in the field of international affairs, had their houses raided by financial police, who confiscated their laptops and electronic devices. The only comment from the Ministry of Finance indicated that the case against the organization involved charges of fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion.
This week, Sopho Gelava's husband, a member of the opposition party Federalists, revealed that due to unknown reasons Gelava and Buziashvili no longer have access to their bank accounts. Their accounts at TBC Bank and Bank of Georgia are not officially frozen, but they cannot withdraw any money and have not been given any reason for this situation. Only after the news garnered widespread attention on social media, TBC Bank issued a brief statement, saying that they are acting by the law, implying that their moves relate to the ongoing investigation.
Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!
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Nakhvamdis!