Georgians Vote With Billionaire’s Party Seeking a Third Term

(Bloomberg) -- Georgians voted Saturday in a general election that will test whether the ruling party, founded by its richest man, can overcome a slump in the country’s currency and widespread discontent over the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic to win another mandate.

Voting closed at 8 p.m. local time and preliminary results are likely from early Sunday morning. The Mtavari TV exit poll showed the Georgian Dream party of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili won 41% of the vote, while its main rival, the United National Movement, took 33%.

The incumbent hopes to secure his third straight election victory over UNM, which nominated archrival and former President Mikheil Saakashvili as its candidate to be prime minister if it wins. Saakashvili fled Georgia after handing over power following his party’s defeat in 2012.

While officials in the Caucasus nation have won praise for combating the spread of the coronavirus, with far fewer cases reported than in neighboring states, Georgia’s economy has still been hit hard. The central bank has forecast that gross domestic product will decline 5% this year before rebounding in 2021, while the lari fell to a record 3.5 per dollar in March as tourism income dwindled amid lockdown restrictions. The currency has declined more than 11% so far this year.

Police reports showed there were six “major incidents” at polling stations. International observers are due to deliver a report on the voting tomorrow.

With Covid-19 cases and deaths rising again this month, the government has said it will resist a return to lockdown measures to protect the economy, while urging Georgians to wear masks and observe social-distancing rules. Turmoil in the region is also a major concern for Georgia amid fighting that erupted Sept. 27 between neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A record 50 parties and electoral blocs are competing for the 150 seats in the parliament of the Caucasus nation of 3.7 million people. Georgian Dream won a super majority of 115 seats in the 2016 elections, but the threshold for entering parliament this time was cut to 1% under a revised voting system intended to expand representation of minority parties.

“We won -- thank you to the public for trusting us,” Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia said outside the party headquarters in the capital, Tbilisi, after voting ended and the exit poll results were published.

Saakashvili said in televised comments that the opposition scored a major victory in the capital and that seeing more opposition parties inside the parliament is a huge victory.

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