The two largest Georgian opposition coalitions, Coalition 4 Change (C4C) and United National Movement (UNM), announced Tuesday their rejection of mandates from the disputed October 26 election. Declaring the ruling pro-Russian Georgia Dream (GD) party as the winner, the election results have been criticized extensively by opposition groups and international observers, who view them as illegitimate.
C4C and UNM made separate announcements claiming that every candidate on their party lists would request the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) to renounce their MP mandates through written requests. “We the Coalition 4 Change shall never enter this illegitimate, Russian Parliament,” C4C claimed. According to UNM’s chair, Tinatin Bokuchava, the CEC will have “no right to send documents to the Parliament recognizing their MP credentials.”
The process of the 2024 Georgian Parliamentary elections has received extensive allegations of violence, voter intimidation, breach of vote secrecy, and obstruction of observers. According to the International Election Observation Mission in Georgia of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), GD representatives observed the elections at most polling stations, recording and tracking voters. During counting, improper handling of unused ballots, and inconsistencies in the determination of the validity of ballots, alongside other transparency issues were also noted.
The 2024 elections were the first in Georgia to use electronic voting. OSCE reported that political parties and observers were given no access to audit processes on election machines in the election, limiting transparency. Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili asserted in an interview that the pro-EU opposition had “won the election,” but that the election results were rigged by manipulating the voting machines to duplicate votes for GD using the same ID, which she claimed was “very well planned in advance,” potentially with support from Russia.
Western governments, including the EU and the US Department of State, have urged an investigation into the irregularities of the elections. Some representatives from Europe and Canada have refused to recognize the results in a letter.
The Chair of Georgia’s Foreign Relations Committee, Nikoloz Samkharadze pushed back against the letter, saying “Masks are off. Signatories of the below letter are not only discrediting democratic elections [in Georgia] & disrespecting the will of people, but they also undermine [the] credibility of the OSCE observation mission by spreading disinformation in a shameful way copying Soviet propaganda style.”
