Georgians rally in Tbilisi and accuse ruling party of ballot rigging

Thousands of Georgians took to the streets in the capital, Tbilisi, last night to rally against the results of a contested weekend parliamentary election in which the increasingly anti-western governing party was declared victorious amid reports of irregularities and voter intimidation.

- Pjotr Sauer

The demonstration outside the parliament in the city centre was organised by the country's pro-western opposition, which has refused to concede defeat and has accused the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party of election rigging.

The pro-western Georgian president, Salome Zourabichvili, whose role is largely ceremonial, said on Sunday she did not recognise the official results and claimed the country had fallen victim to a "Russian special operation" aimed at pulling it back into Moscow's orbit and derailing its plan to join the European Union.

"They stole your vote and tried to steal your future. But no one has the right to do that, and you will not allow it," Zourabichvili told the crowd yesterday, who waved EU and Georgian flags.

At the protest, several opposition leaders demanded new elections, to be overseen by an international commission, and announced that their parties would not take up their seats in parliament, setting the stage for a prolonged political crisis.

The country's electoral commission announced on Sunday that the increasingly authoritarian GD had secured 54% of the vote, winning 89 seats in the parliament.

Voters in the Caucasus country of almost 4 million people had headed to the polls on Saturday in a watershed election to decide whether GD, which has been in power since 2012 and steered the country into a conservative course away from the west and closer to Russia, should get another four-year term.