Officials in Georgia said a partial recount confirmed the ruling party had won its disputed election, while a global research and data firm called the official results reported by the electoral commission “statistically impossible”.
The pro-western opposition on Thursday repeated its earlier assertions that the parliamentary vote had been “stolen” by the ruling Georgian Dream party and it refused to recognise the results, plunging the Caucasus country into uncertainty.
The pro-European president, Salome Zourabichvili, who is at loggerheads with the governing party, has declared the election results “illegitimate”, alleging there was a “Russian special operation” to undermine the vote, which the Kremlin has denied. The opposition has called for further protests next week. On Monday tens of thousands of people thronged the streets in Tbilisi to protest against the alleged fraud.
The central election commission told Agence France-Presse on Thursday that a recount at about 12% of polling stations, involving 14% of the vote, “didn’t lead to a significant change to previously announced official results”.
“Final tallies only slightly changed at some 9% of recounted polling stations,” a spokesperson said.
But the Georgian opposition says the ruling party has engaged in widespread election tampering, citing stark discrepancies between the initial results and an exit poll conducted by western pollsters that showed the ruling party winning only 40% of the vote. On Thursday, the global market research and data firm HarrisX, which carried out one of the exit polls for Georgia’s parliamentary election, said the official results reported by the electoral commission were “statistically impossible”.
International observers, the EU and the US have criticised electoral irregularities and demanded a full investigation. The European Commission on Wednesday said it would not recommend opening EU membership talks with Georgia unless the country changed course.
Georgia’s interior ministry has rejected calls by the opposition to redo the elections. The ministry said two people had been arrested after alleged ballot stuffing at a provincial polling station, while prosecutors said they had opened 47 criminal cases over alleged electoral violations.
On Wednesday, Georgian prosecutors said they had summoned Zourabichvili for questioning, because she “is believed to possess evidence regarding possible falsification”. The figurehead president refused to comply, saying plenty of evidence of electoral fraud was available and prosecutors should focus on their investigation and “stop political score-settling with the president”.
Opposition parties said they would not enter the new “illegitimate” parliament, and demanded fresh elections.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, a Georgian NGO, said in a report released on Thursday that the results “regardless of the outcome, could not be seen as truly reflecting the preferences of Georgian voters”. The group said it had documented “serious (electoral) violations”, including “intimidation, ballot stuffing, multiple voting, unprecedented levels of voter bribery and expulsion of observers from polling stations”.
A group of Georgia’s leading election monitors said earlier that they had uncovered evidence of a complex scheme of large-scale electoral fraud that had swayed results in favour of the ruling party.
Before the elections, Brussels cautioned that they would be a crucial test for Tbilisi’s fledgling democracy and would determine its chances of joining the bloc.
