Billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, leader of her Georgian Dream party, greets demonstrators during a rally in Tbilisi, Georgia, on April 29, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP

The ruling party in Georgia won the country’s parliamentary elections, the central election commission said on Sunday, October 27, 2024, after the opposition called the results fraudulent.

Brussels had warned that Saturday’s vote, seen as an important test for democracy in the Caucasus country, would determine the EU candidate’s chances of joining the bloc.

Giorgi Kalandarishvili, head of the central election commission, told a news conference that official results from more than 99 percent of the regions showed that the ruling Georgian Dream party won 54.08 percent of the vote, while the union of four pro-Western opposition alliances received 37.58 percent.

“The elections took place in a calm and free environment.”

The results will give Georgian Dream 91 seats in the 150-member parliament; this was enough to govern the country, but fell short of the 113-seat “constitutional majority” he sought to ban all main opposition parties. “Georgian Dream gained a solid majority,” the party’s general secretary, Mamuka Mdinaradze, told reporters.

The exit poll conducted by US pollster Edison Research revealed the opposite result.

Opposition parties stated that they did not recognize the election results and described them as “fraud”.

Tina Bokuchava, leader of the opposition United National Movement (UNM), which campaigned on a pro-European platform, said the results were “falsified” and the election was “stolen”.

He stated that UNM did not accept the results and said, “This is an attempt to steal Georgia’s future.”

Nika Gvaramia, leader of the Akhali party, said that the vote was carried out as a “constitutional coup” by the government. “The Georgian Dream will not remain in power,” he said.

Georgian Dream, in power since 2012, initially pursued a pro-Western liberal policy agenda. However, in the last two years the situation has reversed.

His campaign centered on the conspiracy theory about a “global war party” that controls Western institutions and is trying to drag Georgia into the Russia-Ukraine war.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will present their preliminary results at a press conference in the afternoon.