According to the election result announced over the weekend, the ruling Georgian Dream party won the election with almost 54 percent of the votes. Both the opposition and observers, as well as foreign governments, have questioned the result and pointed to various forms of pressure and suspected fraud before and during the election.
The day before yesterday, the election authority announced that a kind of recount of votes would take place in a small number of randomly selected polling stations in each constituency. The opposition already then condemned it as an attempt by a government-friendly authority to whitewash the result.
There have been recounts in 12 percent of the polling stations, says a representative of the authority to the news agency AFP. It did not show any "significant" deviations that would affect the official result, it is said.
The country's EU-friendly president, Salomé Zourabichvili, has said that the election was marked by "sophisticated fraud" and that Georgians have been subjected to a "Russian special operation". Thousands of people have demonstrated in the capital Tbilisi.
Georgian Dream has in recent years adopted a more conciliatory tone towards the large neighboring country Russia, which in practice controls a large part of the country since a war 16 years ago. The ruling party has introduced laws similar to Russian laws that restrict civil society and silence opposition voices. Before the election, it also said it wanted to ban the country's leading opposition parties in the event of an election victory.
The Georgian government, led by the Georgian Dream party, introduced a so-called agent law in June despite widespread popular protests against it.
The law means that organizations that receive more than one-fifth of their funding from abroad must register with the authorities as organizations that act on behalf of a foreign power. It raises questions about press freedom and aid from, among other things, Sweden. The law text has apparently been drafted according to a model used in Russia to restrict civil society and regime criticism.
Georgia has previously inscribed in its constitution that the country's government should strive for EU membership. In December last year, the country received formal status as a candidate country for membership – but when the agent law was passed, EU leaders announced that it effectively meant a stop to the membership process.
In connection with this, the EU summit also demanded that threats and violence against opposition members, journalists, and representatives of civil society should cease.
The few opinion polls that have been conducted have shown that a large majority of Georgia's population wants to join the EU.
