Georgia ruling party wins election seen as choice between Russia and West
With most of the votes counted, Georgian Dream was declared the winner of the country’s parliamentary election.
Georgia’s ruling party has won the country’s parliamentary elections, the central election commission said on Sunday, after the opposition rejected the vote’s results as fraudulent.
Official results from more than 99 per cent of precincts showed the ruling Georgian Dream party won with 54.08 per cent of votes, while a union of four pro-Western opposition alliances garnered 37.58 per cent of the votes, central election commission chair Giorgi Kalandarishvili told a news conference.
The results are a blow to pro-Western Georgians, who had cast the election as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia, and an opposition that had hoped to fast track integration with the European Union.
Georgian Dream’s billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, the opposition, and foreign diplomats had cast the election as a watershed moment that would decide if Georgia moves closer to the West or leans back towards Russia amid the war in Ukraine.
Rival exit polls had given sharply different projections for the election: the Georgian Dream-supporting Imedi TV channel showed the ruling party winning 56 per cent. Exit polls by the pro-opposition channels showed major gains for the opposition parties.
Ivanishvili, the ruling party’s reclusive billionaire founder and one-time prime minister, praised the Georgian people.
