Incumbent candidate Mikheil Saakashvili is set to win the election in the first round, precluding the need for a run-off, Levan Tarkhnishvili, the chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC), said.
Speaking at a news conference at 11pm local time on January 6, Tarkhnishvili said that Saakashvili was leading with 52.8%; followed by Levan Gachechiladze of the nine-party opposition coalition, with 27%.
“These are not final results; these are very early results,” Tarkhnishvili said.
He explained that the figures were based on information received from almost every precinct throughout Georgia. Although some of this information was based on official vote tallies sent by the precincts, Tarkhnishvili admitted that some of it had been conveyed verbally by precinct members – with no official vote tallies having actually been sent. The number of precincts that hadn’t filed official vote tallies, he maintained, however, was relatively low.
His figures, he said, did not take into account vote tallies from overseas precincts, including ones in Iraq and Kosovo, where over 2,100 Georgian soldiers serve. Neither did they reflect votes cast by people registered on polling day – 5% of the total.
Because of all these caveats, the CEC chairman stressed that the results had no legal force. “But we still decided to provide you with this information, considering the extremely high public interest,” Tarkhnishvili said.
He also warned that his figures were subject to revision in the event that some precinct returns were invalidated, either by the CEC or the courts.
At the time of Tarkhnishvili’s comments, the CEC website was listing results from 1,264 polling stations out of a total 3,512.
The delay in posting results was noted by Dieter Boden, a German diplomat leading the OSCE/ ODIHR long-term observation mission. Speaking about the group’s preliminary findings, he said at a news conference in Tbilisi that “the results came in slower than expected.”
Meanwhile, the nine-party opposition coalition, backing Levan Gachechiladze, has already warned that it would launch “permanent protest rallies” if Saakashvili were officially declared the winner.
Davit Gamkrelidze, a presidential candidate and leader of the New Rights Party, who earlier had conceded defeat, also said on January 6 that Saakashvili should now face a run-off against Gachechiladze. Another candidate, Giorgi Maisashvili, has said the same thing. Shalva Natelashvili, the leader of the Labor Party, meanwhile, has called for repeat presidential polls in two months, claiming widespread violations.
