Thousands of Georgians protested in Tbilisi on Monday over alleged election rigging by the ruling party and Russian interference in last month’s vote which the opposition denounced as “stolen”.
The pro-Western opposition has refused to recognise the ruling Georgian Dream party’s win in the October 26 parliamentary election or to enter the newly elected parliament, which it calls “illegitimate”.
The European Union and the United States blasted “irregularities” in the vote, while Georgian Dream’s opponents have accused it of putting the Caucasus country on a pro-Kremlin track.
Several thousand protesters gathered outside Georgia’s parliament on Monday evening, blocking traffic on Tbilisi’s main road, after opposition outfits called on their supporters to take to the streets.
“The Georgian people will never accept falsified election results, an invincible protest movement is rising up and it will sweep away the regime, which has stolen our votes,” the leader of the opposition Akhali party, Nika Melia, told the crowd.
He vowed daily protests, with the next rally set for Tuesday.
Mamuka Khazaradze, the leader of the Coalition for Change, said: “We demand a fresh vote, an international investigation into election falsification, and we will not surrender until our objectives are met.”
President Salome Zurabishvili — at loggerheads with the ruling party — also called the vote “illegitimate” and accused Russia of interference.
Moscow has denied meddling.
“We have no choice but to take to the streets every day to show our government and the world that Georgians will never put up with rigged elections,” one of the demonstrators, 25-year-old shop assistant Lidia Kirtadze, told AFP.
Protesters have accused Georgian Dream of derailing the country’s goal of joining the EU.
“Russia and its stooges in our government want to steal not only the choice of the Georgian people but also our European future,” said winemaker Leo Grigalashvili, 49.
“We will never accept this.”
Ahead of the election, Brussels had warned the vote would determine the EU candidate’s chances of joining the bloc.
Monday’s protest came after tens of thousands gathered in a demonstration in the capital city last week.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has insisted the elections were “entirely fair, free, competitive and clean” and that EU integration was his government’s “top priority”.
But critics have blamed his increasingly conservative Georgian Dream for bringing Tbilisi back into Moscow’s orbit.
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