Tens of thousands of protesters filled the streets of the Georgian capital Tbilisi on the evening of October 28 to challenge the official results of the country’s parliamentary elections, accusing the incumbent Georgian Dream party of stealing the vote to retain power.

As Western governments ponder how to react to the controversial results of the October 26 vote in Georgia, inside the country the risk of clashes is growing, as the opposition is mobilizing supporters and Georgian Dream is reportedly readying riot police. The crowd at the outset of the protest was peaceful.

President Salome Zourabichvili, technically a non-partisan figurehead, rallied Georgians in an address October 27 to challenge the official results: the country’s Central Election Commission (CEC), which is dominated by the ruling Georgian Dream party, said the incumbents won almost 54 percent of the vote. Noting that such a tally exceeded the level of support Georgian Dream received in the previous parliamentary vote in 2020, Zourabichvili and opposition leaders called the (CEC) figures implausible and fraudulent.

“As the last remaining independent office in this country, I say that I don’t recognize this vote,” Zourabichvili said the day after the election. “Accepting this election is tantamount to accepting a Russian takeover of Georgia,” said the president. She accused Georgian Dream’s honorary chairman, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, of subverting Georgia’s goal of joining the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow.   

Flanked by the leaders of opposition parties, Zourabichvili called on Georgians to take to the streets to defend their votes. She also appealed to the United States and EU to help protect Georgian democracy. “I’d like to ask our partners, the Americans and the Europeans, to stand by the people [of Georgia], because this election didn’t work … nothing can make it legitimate,” she said.    

European election observers said elections were competitive but pointed to numerous procedural violations and voter coercion. “Contestants could generally campaign freely, but reports of intimidation, coercion and pressure on voters persisted, especially on public sector employees and the economically vulnerable,” said an international observation mission led by European democracy-monitoring structures.

At a news conference on October 27 European observers refused to answer questions about the overall validity of the election. American observers were blunter in their assessments. “Bending and abusing the system, as the governing party in Georgia has done, to guarantee an outcome takes away the people’s right to exercise genuine choice and hold their leaders accountable,” said Daniel Twinning, the president of International Republican Institute, as he summed up his group’s observations.   

Georgian Dream dismissed vote-manipulation accusations. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the opposition and watchdog groups of attempts to destabilize the country. “Once again these forces are going against the constitutional order in this country,” Kobakhidze said on October 28. “But everyone knows that the state is in control of the situation and, of course, nobody can unsettle the constitutional order in this country.”  

Eurasianet witnessed calm and orderly conduct of voting at several precincts in Tbilisi, but also saw scenes of public employees, such as schoolteachers and municipal staff, being herded to polling stations in an organized manner in small towns and villages. In background comments to Eurasianet, local and international observers described similar scenes occurring at a number of rural precincts. In their broader assessments, observers said that fear of losing jobs or social benefits is forcing rural residents to vote for the ruling party.

Based on the official vote count, Georgian Dream lost Tbilisi to the opposition, but swept through rural areas, gaining up to 80 percent of the vote in select remote municipalities. “We now have a village government,” one commentator quipped on Facebook. Others claimed that some remote areas are notorious for voting irregularities. Observers caught on camera or otherwise reported purported cases of ballot-stuffing in a couple of ethnic-minority-dominated precincts.     

Georgian Dream also lost the émigré vote. Even as the incumbent prevailed at the precincts operating in the neighboring countries like Azerbaijan and Turkey, Georgia Dream suffered crushing defeats at the polling stations set up across the United States, EU, Japan and Australia.  

Key European and American leaders and diplomats conspicuously refused to congratulate Georgian Dream, which has been engaged in an anti-Western rhetoric in the past couple of years. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán was an exception, offering his congratulations and arriving in Tbilisi on October 28.

Georgian Dream has carefully cultivated a close relationship with the Hungarian prime minister, who is famously at odds with Brussels on the EU’s key external affairs issues. “Whatever Mr. Orbán says in his visit to Georgia, he does not represent the EU,” the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, specified. Diplomatic sources and Hungarian media sources informed Eurasianet of Orban’s planned congratulatory visit to Tbilisi well before voting began in Georgia.