Centrum Stosunków Międzynarodowych - 08 October 2016: Parliamentary election in Georgia

The ruling Georgian Dream party, led by Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili, received 48.61% of the votes and won the Georgian parliamentary election that was held on 8 October 2016. The United National Movement (ENM), led by former president Mikheil Saakashvili, took the second place with 27.14% of the votes. According to the external monitors. this year’s parliamentary election was better organized, fairer and much free that previous ones. Besides the two parties, the “Alliance of Patriots of Georgia” that opposes the pro-Western path of development got 5% of the votes and crossed the threshold to gain seats in the Parliament of Georgia.

In a favorable scenario, Georgian Dream can expect to receive a constitutional majority in the parliament. Experts predict that the Georgian Dream may trim presidential power and strengthen the authority of the Prime Minister.

Georgian parliament is elected in a mixed electoral system and consists of 150 seats. 77 seats are elected from party lists under a proportional system, 73 are single-seat constituencies. In most single-member districts (about 50 out of 73) the second round of voting will be held on 2 November 2016. Voters had to make choice between 19 parties and 6 blocks participating in elections under the proportional system. There were 835 candidates including 59 independents.Nino Burjanadze, the leader of Pro-Russian Democratic Movement-United Georgia party, accused the government of falsifying the results. She said that elections were “unfair and non-transparent”. However, Georgia’s Prime Minister stressed that the elections were “truly transparent and fair”, which was backed by OSCE’s monitoring mission.

The pre-election period in Georgia was full of violent incidents. During this time two polling stations were damaged by throwing the stones by unidentified attackers. On Tuesday the car of Givi Targamadze (ENM’s deputy) was bombed, and two men were shot and wounded at an election rally in Gori.