Georgia’s president slams ‘sophisticated’ voting fraud in AFP interview
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Georgia's President Salome Zourabichvili, who has a figurehead role in Georgian politics, has declared the announced results from the weekend vote “illegitimate”.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
TBILISI - Georgia’s pro-European president Salome Zurabishvili in an interview with AFP on Oct 28 alleged “sophisticated” voting fraud in parliamentary polls whose results have been rejected by the opposition.
According to near-final results announced by the electoral commission, the ruling party Georgian Dream won 53.92 per cent of the vote in the Oct 26 election, compared with 37.78 per cent won by a union of pro-Western opposition alliances.
The opposition has said the vote was unfair and has refused to concede defeat to a party it accuses of pro-Kremlin authoritarianism.
Moscow has rejected opposition claims of interference in the vote.
Ms Zurabishvili who has a figurehead role in Georgian politics, has declared the announced results “illegitimate”.
She told AFP that “quite sophisticated” fraudulent schemes were used in the weekend vote.
Ms Zurabishvili said that the high level of planning of the election fraud seemed to be more than the government could have achieved to stay in power, and appeared to show “Russian methodology”, which she said was unsurprising “given what the relations are between the party in power and Russia”.
She alleged that Georgian Dream’s “electoral propaganda was totally copied from Russian propaganda” and “they have PR people... who come from Russia”.
The vote saw “the purchase of votes, pressure in particular on public office holders, pressure on the families of prisoners who can be promised release”, she alleged.
“There was money distributed visibly in minibuses at the exit of the polling stations,” she claimed.
In addition, the vote saw “methods linked to” electronic voting technology, used for the first time in the vote, she alleged.
Identity cards with the same number were used to vote multiple times in different regions, she added.
“It’s very difficult to accuse a government, and that’s not my role, but the methodology is Russian,” she said.
Calling Russia an “aggressor” against Ukraine, Ms Zurabishvili added that “as long as Russia does not return to the path of international norms and standards, it is difficult to deal with it”.
Russia “is threatening, so we have to take that into account, and I think the population here is perfectly aware of that”, she said. AFP
