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Saturday October 31, 2020
The Georgian Dream party has ruled Georgia since 2012. Its boss owns 40 percent of Georgia’s assets. At least that’s what opposition leader Saakashvili, who was president of the country for almost ten years, says. Both parties now claim electoral victory for themselves.
After the parliamentary elections in Georgia, both the ruling party and the opposition claimed victory. The leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, said his party “won the elections for the third time in a row.” Opposition leader and former president Mikhail Saakashvili said the opposition parties had “won a triumphant victory”.
Post-election polls yielded conflicting results: the pro-government television station Imedi reported that the Georgian dream was ahead with 55 percent, while the opposition television station Mtawari reported that the opposition was in the lead with 52 percent. .
The opposition joins
Saakashvili, who lives in exile in Ukraine, said on television that opposition parties “must now form a government of national unity.” Most of the opposition groups had come together in the vote to replace the ruling party. The Georgian Dream party, which has ruled since 2012, is increasingly unpopular in the face of economic woes and allegations of corruption.
The opposition is led by the United National Movement (UNM) party led by former President Saakashvili. Tens of thousands of Saakashvili’s supporters gathered in the capital, Tbilisi, on Thursday. “Georgia woke up,” the former president said in a video message. Saakashvili, 52, fled the Caucasus republic in 2013 to avoid a possible prison sentence for abuse of power. An electoral victory for the opposition could make his return possible.
Saakashvili and Ivanishvili, the richest man in the country, have dominated Georgian politics for decades. Critics accuse Ivanishvili of promoting corruption in the country and pressuring members of the opposition. “An oligarch who owns about 40 percent of Georgia’s assets has taken over the land,” Saakashvili said. Saakashvili himself was Georgia’s president from 2004 to 2013. During this time he pushed for far-reaching economic reforms, but critics also accused him of increasingly autocratic traits.
Long determination of the composition of the parliament.
Both the government and the opposition were confident of victory before the vote, but experts say the outcome of the elections is uncertain. As Georgia has a very complex electoral system, the exact composition of the new parliament was not known until the end of November.
Election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) watched the ballot boxes. In the Caucasus country with its four million inhabitants, there were repeated violent protests after the elections. Only once, in 2012, was there an orderly shift of power.
