Georgia president requires protests as opposition cries foul over election

The election is extensively considered a pivotal for Georgia’s prospects of becoming a member of the European Union. Critics have slammed the federal government’s more and more authoritarian trajectory and shut ties with Russia.

Georgia’s EU membership prospects had been stalled after the Georgian authorities adopted a controversial Russian-style “international brokers” legislation, regardless of warnings that it may jeopardize Georgia’s bid to affix the bloc.

In the lead-up to the election, the ruling party had additionally pledged to ban nearly all opposition events, and has handed a string of Russian-style legal guidelines branding Western-backed human rights teams and media retailers as ‘international brokers,’ and outlawing public references to the LGBTQ+ neighborhood.

A joint assertion declaring the vote was “neither free nor honest” was signed by greater than a dozen European and Canadian politicians, together with the chairs of parliamentary international affairs committees in Germany, Lithuania, Ireland and Ukraine. “Against this background, the European Union can’t recognise the end result,” it reads.

However, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán moved to rapidly congratulate Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and the Georgian Dream party “on their overwhelming victory on the parliamentary elections.” Orbán will go to Tbilisi on Oct. 28, the Georgian authorities introduced, in a transfer prone to rile observe EU leaders.

European Council President Charles Michel decried the alleged intimidation and interference, and stated “these alleged irregularities should be significantly clarified and addressed.”