By Ann Tsurtsumia-Zurabashvili (@TsurtsumiaA )
This post was originally published in Presidential Power and is available here
On October 8, 2016 Georgia held a parliamentary elections to elect 150 MPs using a mixed electoral system. According to this system voters elected 73 MPs in majoritarian, single-seat constituencies, while the remaining 77 seats were distributed proportionally in a closed party-list contest, whereby the party must clear a 5% threshold to win representation. In total, 25 parties and 816 majoritarian candidates contested the election.
Pre-election atmosphere
Despite the high number of parties, the United National Movement (which was the ruling party from 2004-2012) and the Georgian Dream (the ruling party since 2012) remained the front-runners according to all pre-election opinion polls (NDI & IRI polls).
The UNM emphasized renewal and attempted to come out of the shadow of Mikheil Saakashvili. Saakashvili, who is currently serving as governor of Odessa in Ukraine, was the founder of the party and president from 2004-2012.
The founder of the Georgian Dream, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who is now self-described as ‘just a citizen’ , but who for many remains the leader behind the scenes, was closely involved in campaigning through lengthy media appearances.
Until very recently, the electoral campaign was mostly peaceful, save for a few isolated incidents. But as the elections approached, the violence spiked, including the shootout at a campaign event in Gori and the explosion of a UNM MP’s car in the center of Tbilisi.
The “State for the People” party, which was launched by the renowned Georgian opera singer, Paata Burchuladze, just a few months before the elections, was a surprise challenger to the UNM-GD duo. Burchuladze united with several parties in an electoral bloc, including Girchi-New Political Center and Giorgi Vashadze (both of whom had recently split from the UNM). However, the unity vanished just weeks before the election day, leaving many of State for the People candidates out of the elections.
The Free Democrats and The Republicans, so called pro-western and anti-Russian factions of former Georgian Dream coalition decided to run independently.
Lastly, the pro-Russian Democratic Movement led by Nino Burjanadze and the Alliance of Patriots also actively campaigned in the pre-electoral period.
E-day
All 3,702 precincts opened at 8am on polling day, including the polling stations abroad. Georgians residing abroad could cast a ballot only if they were registered at a consulate before September 17, 2016 and attending to vote in person on October 8.
Early exit poll results commissioned jointly by public broadcaster, Imedi TV, Maestro TV, and GDS TV showed that the ruling party had won 53.8%, followed by the UNM with 19.5%, with the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots winning just over the 5% necessary to clear the threshold. The same exit polls showed Free Democrats at 4%; Labor Party at 3.1%; Paata Burchuladze’s State for People at 2.7%; and Republican Party at only 2.7%.
An alternative exit poll was commissioned by the major opposition channel Rustavi 2 TV. Conducted by GfK and fielded by Tbilisi-based pollster BCG Research, this poll returned a better results for the UNM at 32.74%, less for GD at 39.9%, and the Alliance of Patriots at 5.76%. According to Rustavi 2 exit polls, the Labor Party won 4.21%, Paata Burchuladze’s State for People won 3.25%, the Free Democrats won 3.21%, and Nino Burjanadze’s Democratic Movement won 2.81%.
With the exit polls proving controversial, on October 9 the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), Georgia’s largest election monitoring non-governmental organization, released the results of its parallel vote tabulation (PVT) of proportional, party-list vote. This poll largely coincided with the early official results.
According to its PVT results, the ruling Georgian Dream party won 49.1% of the vote and UNM 26.8%. PVT’s margin of error was calculated at +/- 0.9%. ISFED was not able to determine conclusively whether or not the Alliance of Patriots had cleared the 5% threshold. They returned the party at 4.9% of the vote, but the margin of error was +/- 0.3%.
Several irregularities and violations were reported and complaints were filed by local and international observer organizations. In a number of precincts the electoral process and counting were interrupted due to the mob raids. Due to these incidents, several district-level results may be annulled.
Official Results
By October 10, Central Election Commission of Georgia has published the following results from all 3,702 precincts for the party-list vote:
Turnout: 51 %
Georgian Dream – 48.65%
UNM – 27.12%
Alliance of Patriots – 5%
Free Democrats – 4.62%
The process was particularly tense for Alliance of Patriots, as the CEC changed the result from 4.99% to 5% several times.
Of the 73 majoritarian constituencies only 22 candidates cleared the 50% threshold necessary for election at the first round, all of them from Georgian Dream. A second round will therefore be held in 51 constituencies, where in most cases Georgian Dream and United National Movement candidates will compete against each other. One of the exceptions is the Gori seat, where the GD and Free Democrats leader, Irakli Alasania, were to be the two main candidates. However, the leader of the Free Democrats has withdrawn from the race and announced that he is leaving politics.
These results will leave most parties outside parliament. The leader of the Democratic Movement, Nino Burjanadze, has said that he does not recognise the results of elections, while the leader of Republicans, David Usupashvili, accepted defeat.
Assesment of the International Observation Missions
The statement released by EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini and Commissioner Johannes Hahn assessed the elections as “competitive, well-administered” and said that fundamental freedoms were “generally respected”.
According to the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission, “the calm and open campaign atmosphere was, however, impacted by allegations of unlawful campaigning and some incidents of violence. Election Day generally proceeded in an orderly manner, but tensions increased during the day and several violent altercations took place near and in polling stations. However, voting was assessed positively in almost all polling stations”.
Fear of Constitutional Majority
Georgian Dream is eyeing a constitutional majority in the new parliament if it can win most of the run-off elections. It could win 113 seats in the parliament. A constitutional majority requires the support of three-quarters of the total number of MPs.
Georgian Dream has said that it wishes to initiate several constitutional amendments. Firstly, it wishes to define marriage as the union of a man and woman. Secondly, it has openly declared that the President should be elected by parliament instead of by a popular vote. They also wish to change the procedures for impeaching the president, as well as power to change the electoral system.
With only three parties likely to be represented in parliament, Georgia’s young democracy is about to enter a new cycle that will test its political and democratic stability.