Tina Bokuchava of the opposition United National Movement party told POLITICO that the election should be held again so the country could have a government elected by the mandate of its people. Some other party leaders declined to echo her call, however.
The election is widely regarded as pivotal to Georgia’s prospects of joining the European Union. Critics have slammed the government’s increasingly authoritarian trajectory and close ties with Russia.
Georgia’s EU membership prospects stalled after the current government adopted a controversial Russian-style “foreign agents” law, despite warnings it could jeopardize the country’s bid to join the bloc.
In the lead-up to the election, the ruling party also pledged to ban virtually all opposition parties, and passed a string of Russian-style laws branding Western-backed human rights groups and media outlets as “foreign agents,” and outlawing public references to the LGBTQ+ community.
A joint statement declaring that the vote had been “neither free nor fair” was signed by more than a dozen European and Canadian politicians, including the chairs of parliamentary foreign affairs committees in Germany, Lithuania, Ireland and Ukraine. “Against this background, the European Union cannot recognise the result,” the statement read.
However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán moved to quickly congratulate Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and Georgian Dream “on their overwhelming victory at the parliamentary elections.” Orbán will visit Tbilisi Oct. 28, the Georgian government announced, in a move likely to rile fellow EU leaders.
