Ruling party wins majoritarian districts
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, November 1
Georgia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has released the preliminary results of the October 30 second round of majoritarian elections, which took place in 50 majoritarian districts.
The ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia (GDDG) party participated in the race for 49 majoritarian districts and gained victory in 48.
In the remaining two districts, an independent candidate, Salome Zourabishvili, won in Mtatsminda, region of Tbilisi, and a candidate of the Industrialist party, Simon Nozadze, took the eastern Khashuri region.
After the first and second rounds of the Parliamentary elections, held on October 8 and October 30 respectively, the GDDG has 115 MPs in the 150-seat legislative body, which means the party now has a constitutional majority.
This will enable the ruling team to bring changes to the country’s main laws that previously needed the support of the opposition.
The ruling party also won a constitutional majority in the legislative body of the Adjara Autonomous Republic.
Out of the 21-seat legislative body, the GDDG gained 14 seats.
The opposition United National Movement (UNM), the party ruling Georgia in 2003-2012, gained 27 seats in the legislative body, which were obtained after the first round of the elections.
In the run-off elections, the UNM candidates participated in the race for 44 majoritarian districts, but without any success.
Head of the CEC, Tamar Zhvania, has stated that the electoral process was conducted in a peaceful environment, and 195 appeals had been written in total.
Zhvania explained that the biggest portion of the appeals were of procedural or technical.
The ruling party said they had anticipated the victory and thanked the voters for their support.
Meanwhile, the opposition United National Movement stressed that the ruling team won the race with the use of “dirty methods”, but they said they would enter Parliament and would oppose the ruling party “as much as possible”, to make decisions counter to the state interests.
The new Parliament will be composed of 115 MPs from the ruling team, 27 MPs from the UNM, 6 MPs from the Alliance of Patriots, one independent MP and one MP from the Industrial Party.
The new Parliament must gather no later than November 19.
