Georgian Dream wins 48 districts out of 50

Majoritarian candidates from the ruling party Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia (GDDG) have won 48 majoritarian districts out of 50, latest preliminary results show, the Chairwoman of CEC Tamar Zhvania said.

Main opposition party United National Movement (UNM) had no winning candidate at any of the districts.

The two districts where a GDDG candidate didn’t win were the district in Khashuri, where the winner was the candidate from Industrials party Simon Nozadze and the district in Mtatsminda, where the winner was independent candidate Salome Zurabishvili. 

"The elections went in a peaceful environment and voters had an opportunity to express their will. There were some incidents, but overall the process was carried out in a transparent manner,” Agenda.ge cited Zhvania as saying.

The ruling party will take 115 seats in the 150-seat legislature, while the opposition United National Movement (UNM), founded by exiled former President Mikheil Saakashvili, managed to secure only 27 seats, the Alliance of Patriots - six seats, according to the results.

The second round of Georgia’s Parliamentary Elections was held in 50 of Georgia’s 73 election districts yesterday.

A second round of vote was needed in 50 districts as no majoritarian candidates gained enough votes to enter Parliament in the first election on October 8.

The head of the Center for Strategic Studies of the Caucasus, Mamuka Areshidze, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, stressed that this victory deprives the Georgian Dream of an opportunity to refer to a possible confrontation with the United National Movement (UNM) as a reason for the delays in the implementation of election promises. "This is very important, because they were in power for four years, but two of them were constrained by the UNM. Now there is a completely different situation in the country, in which the responsibility for Georgia lies on the Georgian Dream," he said.

Mamuka Areshidze noted that the Georgian Dream has a good chance to stay in power for a long time, if it manages to preserve a stable political and social situation in Georgia. "But if the Georgian Dream does not create a solid foundation for the country's development, it will become a problem for the party. We should also consider the complex geopolitical situation, which has nothing to do with the Georgian Dream: the confrontation between Russia and the West has a very serious effect on Georgia's politics as a whole. Some experts even wonder how the Georgian Dream leaders were able to keep balance in this situation," the expert admitted.

A member of the ‘Expert Club of Georgia’ Vakhtang Maisaya said that a "devastating blow" dealt to the opposition United National Movement was the main outcome of the parliamentary elections. The Georgian Dream won the majority in the parliament, and in addition to 115 seats it has two independent members, who will vote for the Georgian Dream, and 6 deputies from the Alliance of Patriots, who will likely cooperate with them," he explained.

"The first group is Mikhail Saakashvili and his team, the second group is Giga Bokeria and his people and the third group is the new 'clan' led by Nika Melia and Elene Khoshtaria. Now we see how national socialism has been defeated for the first time in Georgian history. I think we should wait for reforms, which will lead Georgia to better results in politics and economics, because it was a problematic coalition structure, which prevented the previous parliament from implementing reforms," Vakhtang Maisaya added.

"Now the Georgian Dream has all the control in its hands, but it also means that now the ruling party bears full political responsibility for the country's development. If they fail to fulfill promises made during the election campaign, they will lose power just as the UNM lost it," the expert added.