Europe Georgia: Election administration reports manipulation attempt

According to official reports, there was an attempt to manipulate the parliamentary elections in Georgia. In the small town of Marneuli in the south-east of the country, a man threw in several ballot papers at a polling station and voting was interrupted, according to the central election commission as reported by the news agency Interpressnews. The results at the polling station would not be counted, it said. The opposition and the government blamed each other for the incident.

The leader of the largest opposition party, the United National Movement, Tina Bokuchava, spoke of a provocation organized by the ruling Georgian Dream party because the opposition had won in the constituency. "We have already identified the provocateur, who is a member of Georgian Dream, but the police have not yet arrested him," she said.

A representative of Georgian Dream, however, explained that the man had been bought by the opposition to commit the provocation. The aim was to subsequently present the election as illegitimate.

The electoral commission has not yet revealed the identity of the vote canvasser. The Ministry of the Interior has initiated criminal proceedings, but there has been no mention of an arrest to date.

The parliamentary election in Georgia is seen as a landmark. The government is pursuing an increasingly nationalist-conservative course and is aligning itself with Russia. It is stoking fears that war will break out if the opposition wins the election. The opposition, on the other hand, wants to lead the country into the European Union. Georgia is a candidate for EU membership, but the process has been put on hold due to a series of recently passed restrictive laws.

SDA