Joint opposition candidate for head of Tbilisi City Assembly, founder of the Droa opposition party, Elene Khoshtaria has cast her ballot in today’s municipal elections and said that the country’s fate is in the hands of voters.
Today Georgians are making a choice between the poor reality we have under the Georgian Dream leadership and the alternative, bright future of the country which lies in the coalition government,” Khoshtaria said.
She reiterated the opposition’s position that today’s elections are also a referendum.
The April 2021 EU-mediated agreement between the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party and the majority of opposition parties proposed the holding of repeat parliamentary elections if the ruling Georgian Dream party received less than 43 per cent of votes in the October 2 municipal elections.
However, ahead of the elections the ruling party withdrew from the agreement ‘because of the refusal of the main opposition party, the UNM, to join the agreement.’
The UNM did not join the agreement because it disliked a stipulation on the amnesty of convicts of June 2019 protests in Tbilisi.
The opposition parties are still hopeful that the ruling party may accept the holding of repeat parliamentary elections if it receives less than 43 per cent of votes in the upcoming elections..
However, the Georgian Dream says that ‘no repeat elections will take place.’