As many as 3,000 people flooded the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, on Sunday in protest of the Russia-friendly Georgian Dream party claiming a victory in the weekend’s regional elections.
The rally was the latest of several such events in the past month against the ruling party that also demanded freedom for former President Mikheil Saakashvili, the leader of the Rose Revolution uprising against politicians tied to Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2003. Putin invaded Georgia in response to Saakashvili’s victory, attempting to break two regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, off of the map of sovereign Georgia.
Saakashvili has been on hunger strike for 32 days as of Monday following his arrest on charges of allegedly misusing his power while president. Saakashvili was arrested on October 1 immediately after entering the country for the first time in years. The former president is now a Ukrainian citizen after a tumultuous near-decade that saw pro-Putin forces in that country attempt to arrest him, as well, and at one time left him entirely stateless.
The former president, in a message from prison, urged all pro-democracy politicians to resign from their official posts in protest of this weekend’s elections.
Images published online of Sunday’s protest showed thousands of people assembled, waving Georgian flags and holding signs calling for Saakashvili’s freedom.
Participants wave flags during a rally in Tbilisi on October 31, 2021, held to demand the release from jail of their ex-president and opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili. (VANO SHLAMOV/AFP via Getty Images)
At the rally, the head of the opposition party United National Movement (UNM) Nika Melia accused the Georgian Dream governing coalition of “violence, blackmailing, and intimidation,” calling the election “totally rigged,” according to Georgian media.
Georgian Dream won 19 of 20 municipal elections, including the mayorship of Tbilisi, and a plurality of other regional elections. This weekend’s elections were runoffs scheduled because the first round of voting was so close, leaving many to wonder how the vote shifted so dramatically for Georgian Dream without any significant changes in polling or observable shift in public sentiment.
Melia, the UNM leader, announced a series of national rallies against the results of the election, and in support of Saakashvili, beginning on Tuesday.
Saakashvili published an infuriated letter on social media on Monday condemning the ruling party and the election results.
“I am very angry and insulted, as all self-respecting Georgians should be angry and insulted. We had the elections stolen from us in every big city,” Saakashvili wrote, we won this election and the group of bandits who usurped the Georgian government snatched this victory from us.”
“We must ensure that the fraudulent government pays the appropriate price to the people – to take back power from them and make them answer to the law,” the former president continued, citing several victories of anti-Russian populist movements in Armenia and Ukraine in recent memory.
Saakashvili discouraged any dialogue or cooperation with Georgian Dream and urged instead “street protest and resistance to violence.” He called on lawmakers to resign en masse, making it impossible for the ruling party to properly govern.
Those close to Saakashvili have reported his health declining significantly as a result of his hunger strike, which surpassed the one-month milestone this weekend. Last week, attorney Dito Sadzaglishvili, told the public that Saakashvili required “resuscitation assistance” on one occasion and could soon see a “sharp decline in health.” A group of doctors, citing information available to them regarding the former president, urged the government to allow him to continue his strike in a private hospital, a demand the government has denied.
Saakashvili has reportedly refused treatment in any prison facility.
Participants wave flags during a rally in Tbilisi on October 31, 2021l held to demand the release from jail of ex-president and opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili. (VANO SHLAMOV/AFP via Getty Images)
The ex-president’s partner Elizaveta Yasko told reporters on Monday that Saakashvili has lost “over 20 pounds” since he began his strike, calling for the president of Georgia to step down or be removed in response to the “great shame” of Saakashvili’s imprisonment.
The U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi issued a statement on Monday appearing to support the clamor of those denouncing fraud, asserting that “allegations of intimidation and pressure on voters persisted and continued polarization, coupled with the escalation of negative rhetoric, adversely affected the process.”
“Sharp imbalances of resources and an undue advantage of incumbency further tilted the playing field,” the embassy asserted, citing “wide-spread violations in the pre-election period and on both election days that adversely affected the ability of citizens to vote freely.”
“Rather than improving the atmosphere by addressing problems identified by election observers in the first round, intimidation, offensive rhetoric, misuse of administrative resources, and reports of blatant vote-buying and other violations continued, and a politicized media further inflamed the polarized atmosphere,” the statement read.
Civil.ge, a United Nations-affiliated outlet, reported on Saturday that the campaigns leading up to elections this weekend had featured outsized violence against journalists, presumably at the hands of Georgian Dream supporters.
“Journalist crews from the government-critical TV networks – TV Pirveli and Formula – were among those most frequently reported as victims as they tried to document possible violations in and around polling stations,” according to the outlet. “Over a dozen journalists, covering the bitterly-contested second rounds of the local elections today, have been attacked across Georgia by unidentified persons and allegedly ruling party activists and coordinators.”