TBILISI: Georgian riot police used pepper spray and water cannons to drive demonstrators away from the presidential palace and detained five activists on Saturday, as the opposition staged a large demonstration on a day of local elections.
The governing Georgian Dream party said it had clinched victory in every municipality across the South Caucasus country of 3.7 million people in an election boycotted by the two largest opposition blocs.
Shortly before polls closed, a group of demonstrators attempted to force entry to the presidential palace in the capital Tbilisi, a Reuters witness said, after opposition figures called for a “peaceful revolution” against GD, which they accuse of being pro-Russian and authoritarian.
Georgia’s pro-Western opposition has been staging protests since October last year, when GD won a parliamentary election that its critics say was fraudulent. The party has rejected accusations of vote-rigging.
Once one of the most pro-Western nations to emerge from the ashes of the Soviet Union, Georgia has had frayed relations with the West since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
