The prime minister denied accusations of vote fraud as the president called for mass protests

Georgia’s prime minister praised the “terrible” election results, denying accusations of vote fraud and violence.

“Irregularities happen everywhere, in every country,” Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in an exclusive interview.

Official preliminary results from Georgia’s election commission gave the ruling Georgian Dream Party a majority of 54%, despite opposition TV channels’ exit polls showing a four-party majority. The opposition won.

Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, condemned the “complete tampering” of the vote and called on opposition supporters to protest outside parliament on Monday.

Election observers in the South Caucasus state bordering Russia have complained about an “unlevel playing field” in the election, suggesting the scale of ballot violations may have affected the outcome.

The United States and the European Union have backed the monitors’ call for an independent investigation. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Georgia’s leaders to “respect the rule of law”Repeal laws that undermine fundamental freedoms and work together to address shortcomings in the electoral process.”

However, the Prime Minister emphasized that out of 3,111 polling stations, “only a few constituencies had incidents” but in all the remaining areas “the environment was completely peaceful”.

Georgian Dream, known as GD, has become increasingly authoritarian, recently passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-governmental groups that receive foreign funding as well as the LGBT community.

The European Union responded by freezing Georgia’s bid to join the EU, accusing the country of “democratic backsliding”. Tbilisi was only granted candidate status last December and an estimated 80% of Georgians want to become a member of the 27-nation alliance.

Even before the results, an EU leader, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, congratulated Georgian Dream on winning a fourth term and traveling to Georgia on Monday.

The ruling party says it wants to launch talks on reviving efforts to join the EU, but the sight of Orban arriving in Tbilisi two days after a disputed election is unlikely to go over well in Brussels. Orban is considered Russia’s closest ally in the EU and the European Parliament has denounced his government as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy”.

GD considers himself closely aligned with Orban’s socially conservative style. The head of the party’s EU integration committee, Maka Bochorishvili, told the BBC: “Conservatism is not banned, family values ​​are also part of European values.”

Responding to widespread reports of vote fraud in the election, the heads of the European Council of member states, Charles Michel, said “unusual allegations must be clarified and seriously addressed”.

“Of course we have to deal with irregularities that occurred on election day or before,” Georgia’s prime minister told the BBC. “But the general content of the election is consistent with legal principles and democratic election principles.”

Four opposition groups have refused to recognize the election results, denouncing it as fake, and they have accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of stealing votes.

Surrounded by opposition leaders, Salome Zourabichvili said the vote could not be recognized and called on people to gather on Rustaveli Street, the major avenue running through parliament, to “defend constitutional rights our”.

She also accused Russia of meddling in the vote without giving details, although Nika Gvaramia of the opposition Alliance for Change coalition made accusations of a “publicly planned special operation”. statements of Russian intelligence agencies”.

The Alliance for Change and another opposition group, the United National Movement, said they would boycott parliament.

The opposition will now hold 61 seats in the 150-seat parliament, while Georgian Dream will have 89 seats – a majority but not big enough to enact the kind of constitutional changes it wants to make good on its threat. threatened to ban opposition parties.

Two opinion polls conducted by Western pollsters for opposition TV channels showed that the opposition had won and that GD had won a maximum of 42% and not 54%.

In an interview with the BBC, Kobakhidze accused the opposition of lying, saying they had also said the vote was faked in 2016, 2020 and 2021.

“Of course now they have no choice, so they have to tell their supporters that they lied or that the government rigged the election.”

An electronic vote counting system was used for the first time on Saturday and the prime minister said it made the election impossible to rig: “There is no room for manipulation.”

The chairman of Georgia’s election commission, who oversaw the new system, praised the vote as largely peaceful and free, but a very different picture emerged from the monitoring groups that presented the initial findings. their head.

Georgia’s Isfed group reported a series of violations, including bribery, threats and ballot stuffing, and said the results “cannot be considered a true reflection of the preferences of Georgian voters”.

Per Eklund, a former EU ambassador and member of the delegation of the National Democratic Institute, said it was clear that the pre-election period in particular had failed to meet democratic standards.

“Voter intimidation… leading up to election day has seriously undermined the process,” he said.

The billionaire founder of Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, has in recent months stoked anti-Western rhetoric, accusing an unidentified “global war party” of wanting to drag his country into war. war in Ukraine.

His baseless claims have led to concerns that his party is adopting Russian-style laws and returning to Russia’s sphere of influence, 16 years after a five-day war in which Russian troops invaded Georgia.

Russian commentators widely welcomed the victory of Georgian Dream as a sign that Georgia would begin to return to Moscow.

And Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized Georgia’s president’s comments rejecting the election results and casting doubt on Georgia’s accession to the EU.

“To think that the EU can still offer anyone a ‘European future’ is simply stupid,” she said on social media.

In an interview with the BBC, Irakli Kobakhidze rejected opposition accusations that the government is pro-Russian and “pro-Putin”. He said they tried to damage the government’s reputation with Georgia’s population of 3.7 million.

The prime minister said Georgia is the only country in the region that does not have diplomatic relations with Russia because Russia has occupied 20% of Georgia’s territory since the 2008 war.