The U.S. and European allies are raising alarm over Georgia’s elections, where the Russian-friendly ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) claimed victory over opposition parties that have refused to recognize the results, accused the Kremlin of meddling and called for mass protests.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, joined by some of his counterparts, has held back on recognizing GD’s victory and called for investigations into the elections.

The final tally on Oct. 26 gave GD nearly 54 percent of the vote — a comfortable mandate for control of the Parliament that could insulate the party from entering into EU-promoted negotiations with the opposition, which happened in disputed election results in 2020.

Experts following Georgia's democratic backsliding are worried that international attention will fade and efforts to address fraud will be ignored.

“We cannot find ourselves in the same situation as in 2020 when the Georgian opposition and the Georgian people were saying that the elections were rigged, but at the end of the day, our international partners were saying that ‘maybe there were some cases of elections being fraudulent, but overall, they were fair and free,' because this is not what happened this time,” said Elene Kintsurashvili, program coordinator for the German Marshall Fund who is based in the organization’s Warsaw office.

“There is a worry that we might end up where Belarus is and I can assure you that this is not what Georgia people want.”

Georgian Dream........

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