The official election result, a victory for the ruling party Georgian Dream with nearly 54 percent of the votes, has been questioned by the opposition and large parts of the Western world.
On Monday evening, tens of thousands gathered to demonstrate outside the parliament in the capital Tbilisi.
Per Eklund, former EU ambassador to Georgia, has just returned from the country, where he led a delegation of election observers from the think tank National Democratic Institute (NDI).
He has brought with him testimony of harassment, threats, vote-buying, and confiscated ID cards. Partly on election day. But even more important, he says, is what happened before.
"Has its agents"
Georgia is a poor country where the ruling party, according to Eklund, has created and controls large amounts of "partly artificial jobs".
There are plenty of testimonies of threats that say "we know that your brother works there and there, and if you don't vote for us, he'll lose his job". People know that they have their agents and that they risk their job if they don't vote correctly. The election has been characterized by fear all the way up to election day, he says.
The problem is being able to prove it, since few are willing to come forward.
Independent media publish pictures that allegedly show a man stuffing a box full of ballots. But 90 percent voted in modern polling stations where that type of fraud is not possible, emphasizes Eklund, who believes that the election result itself may be correct.
It's the entire process leading up to the election that is incorrect and undemocratic. Georgian Dream controls all major media, the judiciary, and uses its administrative resources.
Turbulent
A few days before the election, Georgian Dream announced a large donation to the church. Shortly thereafter, the Georgian patriarch went out and urged church members to vote for "lasting peace" and "Christian traditions" – according to Eklund, unmistakable "code language" for the ruling party.
Per Eklund looks bleakly at Georgia's future.
80–90 percent of the population has consistently been clear about how they want the country to develop: towards Europe. Whatever Georgian Dream says, everything suggests that it's not their top priority. They're talking about banning opposition parties. In combination with a society where people easily take to the streets, I believe it will be turbulent for a long time to come. We've only seen the beginning.
