There was political turmoil in the South Caucasus country Georgia after President Salome Zourabichvili announced on Sunday that she would not recognize the results of the parliamentary elections held the day before. The vote gave victory to the ruling Georgian Dream party, which won 89 seats in parliament with 53.92 percent of the votes cast and renewed its mandate to form a government. The leading opposition parties supported by the President received a total of 37.78 percent of the votes and had a total of 61 representatives.

Zourabichvili, who was born in France and worked in the country’s diplomatic service for 30 years, including at the Georgian embassy, ​​called Saturday’s elections a “special operation by Russia” and a “constitutional coup”. The president, who is also commander-in-chief of the military while holding a ceremonial post, called for mass protests on Monday night and called for “the firm support of our European partners, our American partners.”

Media reports indicate that tens of thousands of people, many draped in Georgian and EU flags, took to the streets, similar to mass pro-Western demonstrations at the beginning of the summer when the Georgian Dream government passed the “foreign agents” law. Zourabichvili, who told the crowd last night, “They stole your vote,” found time between addressing demonstrations and trying to change the election results to give an interview to CNN. Speaking to Christiane Amanpour on Monday, he called the October 26 vote a “complete falsification.”

The country’s president is laying the groundwork to overthrow the re-elected ruling party. As Brian Whitmore, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted in a comment on the organization’s website Monday, “Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections have entered the ‘Maidan’ phase.” Drawing a comparison between what is currently happening in Tbilisi and the right-wing coup that brought the current regime to power in Kiev, he observed: “This weekend’s deeply flawed elections were merely the opening bell.”

The Georgian opposition, which is fiercely anti-Russian and has extremely close ties to Washington and Brussels, insists that vote-buying, physical violence and other “irregularities” marred Saturday’s vote. Several opposition political parties announced that they would refuse to take their seats.

Irakli Kobakhidze, leader of the GD and speaker of the country’s parliament, denied allegations that his party was involved in any effort to manipulate the election. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also rejected accusations of Russian interference, stating that this had become standard fare.