Tbilisi is still at the time of the legislative elections. Far from providing a clear answer, the election of October 26 gave birth to a new political crisis. Along the avenues of the Georgian capital, the huge Georgian Dream electoral posters are still present. After a partial recount of the votes – the European Union (EU) and the United States, in particular, expressed doubts about the regularity of the vote – the pro-Russian party in power since 2012 officially claimed victory with 54%. votes on October 31; but this remains hotly contested by the opposition and civil society.
The number 41, number from the Georgian Dream list, is omnipresent on the posters. “Unfortunately it’s also my age, I hate that number,” says lawyer Guiorgui Mchvenieradze while driving his car. Stuck in traffic, he regularly consults his smartphone to follow the latest developments in the crisis which is shaking the Caucasian nation of 3.7 million inhabitants.
“I always have a bag with stuff in the trunk. I can be called to another city at any time for my lawyer's hat or to support activists,” says this human rights specialist who founded, in 2022, Democracy Defenders. This NGO fights against Russian disinformation and trains young people in non-violent action: “Working as a lawyer was no longer enough, I had to do something else, because our democracy must be defended. After the 2020 legislative elections, the government radically changed its rhetoric, but also its political and geopolitical orientation. »
Democracy Defenders belongs to the civil society coalition MyVote (bringing together 29 organizations), which played a key role in observing the elections and then in collecting and disseminating evidence of fraud.
One month in prison
Guiorgui Mchvenieradze was already an electoral observer in 2003. He even spent a month in prison for denouncing fraud in the Adjara region, then controlled by local boss Aslan Abachidze. “At the time, the main problem was incomplete lists. This year, we are faced with multiple voting, pressure on voters and, above all, the lack of confidentiality of the vote,” he explains. Two decades ago, the demonstrators finally won their case, leading, during the “Rose Revolution”, to the fall of the corrupt regime of Edward Shevardnadze. Today, the outcome of the standoff is more uncertain.
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Source: Lemonde