Thousands of Georgians Protest Election Results, Opposition Calls for New Elections
Georgian Parliament, Tbilisi, Georgia 10/28/24
10/29/2024
By: Daniel Miller
On Monday, thousands of protesters gathered in front of the Georgian Parliament and around Liberty Square in downtown Tbilisi, two days after a crucial parliamentary election, which is facing widespread condemnation due to claims of irregularities and allegations of electoral fraud, vote purchasing, and voter intimidation. Irakli Kobakhidze, prime minister and former chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, declared their 54% share of the vote a “landslide” victory while acknowledging the irregularities and claimed that they “happen everywhere, in every country."
It should be noted that GD declared victory as soon as they passed the 50% threshold, which happened when 30% of the votes still needed tabulating. The Russian government was also one of the first countries to recognize the results as legitimate, followed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Kobakhidze has also maintained that he will not seek to strengthen diplomatic ties with Russia and promised to uphold the party’s campaign of eventually integrating the country into the European Union (EU), a policy that at least 4 out of every 5 Georgians support but have yet to see any progress after years of empty promises and democratic backsliding.
In response to these allegations, President Salome Zourabichvili called for peaceful protesters to assemble in front of the parliament building, where she and members of the opposing coalition announced that they would not negotiate with GD and called for new elections to take place under international supervision.
When asked during a recent interview about widespread fears of Russian interference, Zourabichvili issued a terrible response, asserting that a presentation of evidence didn’t matter, while subsequently claiming that “what is important is not what we demonstrate from the outside, but what the Georgian population knows, feels, and sees.” She said the evidence was irrelevant because the United States and other European countries were unable to also present evidence of claims of Russian election meddling and interference, claims that are empirically false. Anyone across Central and Eastern Europe will tell you that Russia works to destabilize their countries. The evidence is all around if one travels to these places.
This lazy and myopic answer was all the fuel that anti-Western conspiracy theorists needed to conflate her answer about Russian meddling with the question of Georgian Dream election rigging. Dozens of proud homophobic Orthodox Christians, who also uncritically blame NATO for Russia invading Ukraine, were fear-mongering over alleged Ukrainian sniper spies getting ready to initiate a CIA-backed coup, or “another Maidan” as some put it. Of course, these idiotic claims turned out to be false, just like the pervasive and baseless belief that Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution eleven years ago was anything but organic, as if the majority of the people in these countries are simply brainwashed by the US into believing that democracy is preferable to autocracy instead of developing it naturally from their own lived experiences.
The only European leader to recognize the results of the election has been Orbán, who congratulated GD on an “overwhelming victory” before it was announced that he would arrive in Tbilisi on Monday night to personally meet with Kobakhidze. He was immediately met with boos as he and his security made their way to the hotel through the dense crowd of protesters.
“Orbán is not welcome here,” a protester told me. “He’s just like Putin.”
As I wandered through the crowd, I noticed many EU and Georgian flags waving in support of democracy and human rights. Many Ukrainian flags were also flying high, and I even spotted an American one. “I love the US! I hope to live there one day,” another protester told me, which is a fairly common phrase to hear in Georgia. It was a bittersweet feeling for me – as these people are fighting with every breath they have for democracy, many people in my country have taken it for granted and are now in grave danger of letting it slip away.
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