Georgia: Ruling Georgian Dream party wins election

Georgia's electoral commission has declared the ruling Georgian Dream party the winner of Saturday's vote. Opposition parties are not recognizing the results.

Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party won Saturday's parliamentary election, receiving more than 54% of the vote, the electoral commission said on Sunday.

The result is a setback for those Georgians who would like their country to  integrate into the EU, as the Georgian Dream party is seen as tending more toward Russia than the West, despite declarations to the contrary.

Several pro-European opposition coalitions have not recognized the preliminary result and have announced protests.

EU dreams on hold

Georgian Dream, a conservative, nationalist party founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili — who largely made his fortune with business deals in Russia — secured 54.09% of the votes with almost all ballots counted, election official Giorgi Kalandarishvili announced in the capital,Tbilisi. 

He said a union of four pro-Western opposition alliances received 37.58% of the votes.

Although Georgian Dream says it wants Georgia to join the EU, the fact that it also favors closer cooperation with Russia would seem to conflict with this declared aim.

Brussels says the country's membership application is frozen, citing what it sees as authoritarian tendencies on the part of the Bulgarian government after it enacted a number of controversial laws.

Those laws include sweeping curbs on LGBTQ+ rights modeled on similar Russian legislation.

tj/wd (Reuters, dpa, AFP)