National Movement Ahead in Parallel Vote Tabulation Results
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| Saakashvili: we will rally if necessary |
While the preliminary information of the Central Election Commission says the pro-presidential bloc For New Georgia is narrowly ahead of other parties.
According to the ISFED’s parallel vote tabulation results the National Movement received 26,2% support, while the pro-presidential election bloc For New Georgia up to 19%. The opposition Labor Party, Burjanadze-Democrats, the Revival Union and the New Rights are among those parties who could clear 7% barrier, necessary to secure seats in the new Parliament.
Nino Toronjadze, ISFED’s assistant for the statistics issues, claims that the margin of error of PVT results do not exceed 2%.
“The supreme goal of the PVT was to find out the will of the Georgian people. These results show the choice of the Georgian people made at the November 2 parliamentary elections. The results are final and will not change,” ISFED Executive Director Zurab Chiaberashvili said at a news briefing on November 3.
Noteworthy, that the PVT results coincide with the results of exit polls conducted by the U.S. polling firm Global Strategy Group, under which the Saakashvili-National Movement takes a leading place. However, they differ from the preliminary results of the official electoral body the Central Election Commission (CEC), in which the pro-presidential bloc takes a leading place, followed by the National Movement.
“Our results and those of CEC will not coincide with each other; we know it well, since this body is subordinated to the authorities. The Chairperson has been appointed by the President, and no wonder that these data differ. Simply, we know the will of the people and the will of the authorities, which tries to use the results of the elections in its favor,” Nugzar Kupreishvili of ISFED told Civil Georgia, who condemned those numerous violations reported during the November 2 voting.
“Of course, these elections were not ideal, serious violations and pressures were reported. Despite it, we were protecting the elections and I hope, by this we protected the will of the Georgian people. If it were not high turnout of voters, if it were not their desire to hold elections in Georgia, we should not have received such results,” Chiaberashvili said.
He said, the results of PVT do not include the data from those polling stations, where ISFED observers reported violations, such as hijacking of ballot boxes, using of extra ballot papers, pressure on observers and intimidation of voters.
ISFED has also obtained data from Kvemo Kartli and the Adjara Autonomous Republic, however, as Chiaberashvili explained, these data were not included in the results of PVT, since the international and local observers reported violations at most polling stations in these regions.
“We have received the first results from Adjara and Kvemo Kartli. Vote tabulation completed there sooner, that casts doubt over holding of fair elections. Our observers report violations at other polling stations as well and we shall file a lawsuit against all of them,” Zurab Chiaberashvili said.
“We have observed violations at 20% of polling stations. We have relevant information and documents in this regard to be submitted to the election administration and the court,” Zurab Chiaberashvili stated.
According to him, PVT included the data from those polling stations, where fair elections were held with observation of the election code.
It is anticipated that the National Movement will stage a protest rally in case the official results of the elections do not coincide with the PVT results.
“We believe that the results of the parallel vote tabulation are fair. The authorities did everything to rig the ballot, but we will do our best to defend our votes. We will stage the protest rallies, appeal the international organizations and go to court in case the CEC’s results do not coincide with the PVT results,” Kote Kemularia of the National Movement alliance told Civil Georgia. He added that the National Movement will wait until the official results are announced.
According to the CEC the National Movement narrows the gap with the For New Georgia, as the CEC counted votes from the 795 precincts out of 2,870. The CEC’s results might change as even the half of the votes is not counted yet.