Republicans Concede Defeat

The opposition Republican Party has conceded defeat in the May 21 parliamentary elections blaming the ballot rigging. It, however, also admitted that the party itself had failed to properly deliver its message to voters.

“The preliminary analysis of the results of elections has shown that the Republican Party was defeated in the struggle with violators and swindlers and will receive less than 5% [needed to clear the threshold] through the proportional system,” Davit Usupashvili, the Republican Party leader said on May 22.

“However, impartial consideration and settlement of the facts of violations, violence, bribing blackmail, ballot rigging revealed by us would have caused holding of repeated elections in about 70% of polling stations and in case of impartial elections, our result would be about 10-12%… We should have been better prepared for the fact that we had to deal with violators and swindlers and respectively.”

With about half of the votes counted the Republican Party, according to the Central Election Commission, has received 3.61% of votes.  

He also said that the party had failed “to properly deliver its message” to voters, to the international community and to the authorities as well.

Usupashvili, however, claimed that the party’s two majoritarian MP candidates – one in Tsageri (where the ruling party had no candidate) and in Kazbegi – won majoritarian contests.