(Bloomberg) -- Georgia’s Prosecution Service opened a probe into fraud allegations in the country’s parliamentary elections and said it plans to question President Salome Zourabichvili about her claims that the results were rigged.
Zourabichvili “has been summoned to the investigative agency for an interview” on Thursday, the service said in a statement. The president “is believed to possess evidence regarding possible falsification” of the vote, following her comments about the polling, it said.
At a news conference later Wednesday, Zourabichvili said the prosecutor’s office should “focus on its responsibilities,” as she showed a video containing examples of violations during the voting. “Instead of investigating me, I advise them to end the political vendetta against the president and start doing their job,” she said.
Tens of thousands of people joined opposition protests in the capital Tbilisi on Monday over the election that Zourabichvili called a “total fraud.” The ruling Georgian Dream party, which has drawn the country closer to Russia, gained 54% in Saturday’s vote to extend its 12-year rule, putting it on course for 89 of the parliament’s 150 seats.
Four opposition parties that backed a pro-European charter drawn up by Zourabichvili won 38% support. They have threatened not to take up their mandates in response to the alleged rigging.
Prosecutors announced the probe after Georgia’s Central Election Commission called for a “thorough and objective investigation” into the claims of violations made by the president and opposition parties. The commission said in a statement on Tuesday that it had faced “baseless criticism” over the conduct of the election.
The European Union and the US have expressed concerns about the vote. International observers said the election was marred by “highly divisive campaign rhetoric” and reports of intimidation, coercion and pressure on voters, though they didn’t challenge the overall result.
Georgian Dream has rejected allegations of vote-rigging, and it won endorsement on Tuesday from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
Orban told Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze during a visit to Tbilisi that criticisms of the election from the 27-nation bloc “are not to be taken seriously.”
(Updates with president’s comments in the third paragraph.)
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