‘Minimal Percentage Can Radically Change The Situation’
- 29.10.2024, 15:29
How will events develop in Georgia and Moldova?
Protests are underway in Georgia after the scandalous parliamentary elections. Opposition parties have announced a boycott of the parliament. The president is on their side.
How might events develop in Georgia? Charter97.org spoke with Ukrainian political scientist, professor at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv Petro Oleschuk:
— It will depend on many factors. First of all, on the position of the opposition parties themselves. According to the Constitution of Georgia, the ruling party “Georgian Dream” receives, theoretically, a parliamentary majority based on the results of official elections, which many consider to be falsified, which is enough to form an independent government.
However, this is an unconstitutional majority. If not all opposition parties enter the parliament, then it becomes illegitimate and new early elections must be held.
To do this, all opposition politicians must refuse to accept mandates. All parties must hold congresses, party conferences, where they must reset the lists so that no one can enter parliament.
After this, the parliament will not have enough deputies, it is incompetent and new elections must be announced.
In addition, the President of Georgia has already stated that she will not open the session of the newly elected parliament, since she believes the elections were falsified. After a certain time, work can begin without her, but this will provide a certain delay. For now, the opposition forces intend to try to influence the situation in a legal manner, to achieve early elections.
I will note that yesterday I noticed an alarm bell. Russian RIA Novosti stated that snipers trained in Ukraine are allegedly being sent to Georgia, who are supposed to take part in provocations.
It is possible that during any future protests, provocations with shooting and the like are possible in order, again, to try to heat up the situation.
Here the question arises, what strategy does the Georgian government and Russia have in this regard, which, obviously, supervises all of this and moves it in some way of its own. To be honest, I don’t really understand all of this yet.
It is possible that Russia has a scenario of a violent escalation with the subsequent violent suppression of protests in order to show, look, we are strong and we are capturing everyone.
It is still quite difficult to predict all of this, but I see that, perhaps, Putin wants to finally get some kind of intermediate geopolitical victory in Georgia.
— Another country is about to hold fateful elections — Moldova. There, the pro-European candidate Maia Sandu is opposing the pro-Russian Stoianoglu. In the referendum on the European choice, the result was decided by a few thousand votes. How can the situation develop here?
—The situation can develop in a similar way. Again, the question arises about how different candidates will approach the mobilization of their voters. We know that there are some kind of pro-Russian enclaves in Moldova, so the situation does not look very predictable.
After all, on the one hand, Russia is pouring huge amounts of money into direct vote-buying. On the other hand, there is a significant number of Moldovan citizens who are currently outside the country, for whom the issue of the European vector of development is extremely important.
It is difficult to say who will be able to mobilize better for the final vote, but we see that the gap is minimal. A minimal percentage of support for one side or the other can radically change everything.
I hope that, having seen the real risks, pro-European voters will be able to mobilize more and gain, albeit a small, advantage.