Georgia’s three opposition parties, alleging vote-rigging in last weekend’s vote, on Thursday, the 31st of October, called for protests on Monday after pollster HarrisX, a global market research and data company, which carried out a exit polls in Georgia’s parliamentary elections over the weekend, said a ruling party victory was “statistically impossible” and suggested there were irregularities in the Central Election Commission’s (CEC) results, reports Reuters.
The Georgian Dream party reportedly won almost 54% of the vote in Saturday’s elections, but observer groups pointed to significant electoral irregularities and Western countries called for a thorough investigation.
A HarrisX poll commissioned by the Georgian opposition TV channel Mtavari Arkhi showed that all four main opposition parties should win a majority in Saturday’s elections.
“We will gather on Monday at 19.00 … and tell you our plan. In detail, how at home or abroad, within the legal framework, peacefully, but via organization and with a concrete result, we will continue our protest,” Ana Dolidze, spokeswoman for the opposition bloc Strong Georgia, told a press conference of the three opposition parties.
Georgian opposition leaders said that sustained protests are a key element of their plan to challenge the election results.
“It is the most direct and oldest form of democracy if the government refuses to listen to its people at the ballot box,” Tina Bokuchava, leader of the opposition United National Movement party, told Reuters.
The US-based firm’s analysis provides strong support for claims by President Salome Zourabichvili and opposition parties that the elections were stolen. On Monday, thousands of people protested in front of the parliament building in Tbilisi against the election results.
The CEC insists that the vote was free and fair. Prosecutors have launched an investigation and have asked Zourabichvili, an opponent of the Georgian Dream, to provide evidence of the fraud allegations – she has said it was their job, not hers.
“Our analysis of the exit poll, calibrated to the final CEC information, casts doubt on the final vote count published by the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Georgia,” HarrisX said.
“We see statistically unexplained discrepancies accounting for more than 8% of the total number of votes or at least 172 523 raw votes in at least 27 constituencies.”
The report said that this discrepancy “cannot be explained by statistical anomalies indicating possible voting irregularities”.