Despite the wide margin of victory by Georgian Dream in the Oct. 26 election, and the finding of the OSCE observers on the scene that there was no systematic abuse in the election, the campaign to undermine and punish Georgia hit the ground running. The four pro-Western opposition parties, none of which had won more than 11% of the vote, have now refused to recognize the results and plan to boycott the elected legislature. Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili (a largely powerless position) has consulted with various EU officials, and the team plans to push “Maidan"-style protests. Zourabichvili, a French citizen who studied in New York under Zbigniew Brzezinski at Columbia University, and later became France’s Ambassador to Georgia, has been the Atlanticists’ leading hope.
The (unelected) President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced yesterday: “The people of Georgia have been fighting for democracy. They have a right to know what happened this weekend. A right to see that irregularities are investigated swiftly, transparently, independently. As free and fair elections are at the core of European values.”
