In Georgia, opposition supporters protested outside the national parliament building on Sunday after the ruling party won most of the local seats.
On Saturday, the Georgian Dream party’s candidates won 19 of the country’s 20 municipal elections in runoff ballots, including the mayorships of Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Rustavi, Batumi and Poti.
The opposition believes there has been a fraud.
Nika Melia, the leader of the biggest opposition party, United National Movement and a mayoral candidate in Tbilisi said that the gains won by the opposition in numerous towns were taken away as if they never happened.
According to an election-observer mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the voting and counting were mainly judged positively, despite some procedural difficulties, which occurred particularly during counting.
Melia told the throngs of demonstrators who had shut down the capital’s major thoroughfare that opposition leaders will be dispatched to neighbouring towns to gather people to come to Tbilisi for a massive march on November 7th.
After no candidate in the cities achieved an absolute majority in the first round of nationwide municipal elections on October 2nd, the runoff polls were held on Saturday.
Mikheil Saakashvili, who founded the United National Movement, was arrested on October 1st and that cast a shadow over the election.
Saakashvili fled Georgia in 2013 after being convicted of abuse of power and sentenced to six years in prison. He returned to Georgia from his home in Ukraine, wanting to help the opposition in the first round of voting, but he was detained and imprisoned within a day. Soon after his detention, he declared a hunger strike.
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