The Georgia Opposition Party announced on Sunday (October 31) plans to hold a large-scale anti-government protest rally next weekend, condemning the ruling party for winning the local election finals.
Since the 2020 parliamentary elections, the former Soviet republic has been plagued by political crises. This month’s main government critic Mikheil Saakashvili returned from exile, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili returned from exile. Mikheil Saakashvili was sentenced to jail this month, which exacerbated the crisis.
Saakashvili refused food for 31 days in protest of his imprisonment. He said it was politically motivated and the United States expressed concern about his condition.
On Sunday, the Election Commission stated that the ruling Georgian Dream Party won by a narrow margin in all but one city, and its candidate faces a challenge from Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) in the local election finals. .
“I congratulate everyone on winning the second round. We won in all cities,” Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said in a televised speech.
But the opposition coalition led by UNM said it would not recognize the results, accusing Georgia of dreams of “stealing elections.”
Later in the evening, opposition leaders addressed the approximately 1,500 supporters gathered outside the parliament, stating that they would travel across Georgia in the next few days to inspire a large-scale protest movement against the Georgian Dream Government.
The UNM chairman and the hopeful Nikamelia, the mayor of Tbilisi, announced that the “largest protest rally in history” would be held in the center of Tbilisi within a week.
“The election was rigged, and we don’t recognize the result,” he said. “We will fight for justice. We will not back down.”
‘Improper advantage’
On Sunday, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe stated that the election was “technically working well”.
But they reiterated their concerns about the so-called “intimidation, buying votes, and exerting pressure on candidates and voters” after the first round of voting.
“The ruling party once again enjoys an undue advantage,” they said in a statement, referring to resources allocated by the state.
The U.S. Embassy had previously stated that it “expressed doubts about the overall fairness of the vote”, while the European Commission’s rights monitoring agency stated that the first round of voting “lost the opportunity for local democracy in Georgia”.
In last year’s parliamentary election, the ruling party won by a narrow margin, but it was also called a fraud by the opposition. Saakashvili’s imprisonment further deepened the crisis.
In the largest anti-government demonstration in a decade, tens of thousands of people rushed to the streets of Tbilisi on October 14 to demand his release.
The doctor said that Saakashvili faces an imminent risk of death because he suffers from an underlying blood disease, which makes his hunger strike particularly dangerous.
But the Georgian Ministry of Health rejected their suggestion to hospitalize Saakashvili.
Gary Bashvili has stated that the former president will be transferred to a prison medical facility “if needed”, which, according to the country’s rights inspector, does not meet the hospitalization standards defined by medical personnel.
The prime minister recently caused an uproar, saying that Saakashvili “has the right to commit suicide” and the government was forced to arrest him because he refused to withdraw from politics.
Critics accuse Georgian Dream of using criminal proceedings to punish political opponents and journalists.
