Georgia’s prime minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, has rejected allegations of vote-rigging and violence in Saturday’s election, and spoken of the disputed result as a “landslide” and a crucial victory for this country.
“Irregularities happen everywhere,” the Georgian Dream PM told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in an exclusive interview.
Official preliminary results from Georgia’s election commission gave the ruling Georgian Dream an outright majority of 54%, despite exit polls for opposition TV channels suggesting four opposition parties had won.
Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has condemned “total falsification” of the vote and election observers have suggested the violations may have affected the result.
However, the prime minister insisted that out of 3,111 polling stations, there had been incidents in “just a couple of precincts”.
