TBILISI, Georgia: Georgia’s president said Sunday she did not recognize the results of this weekend’s parliamentary vote, which election officials say was won by the ruling party, adding that the country fell victim to a “Russian special operation” aimed at moving it off a path toward Europe.
Standing alongside opposition leaders, President Salome Zourabichvili urged Georgians to rally Monday night on Tbilisi’s main street to protest what she called a “total falsification, a total stealing of your votes,” raising the prospect of further political turmoil in the South Caucasus nation.
She spoke the day after an election which could decide whether Georgia embraces Europe or falls under the sway of Russia.
“This election cannot be recognized, because it is the recognition of Russia’s intrusion here, Georgia’s subordination to Russia,” Zourabichvili said.
The Central Election Commission said Sunday that the ruling party, Georgian Dream, got 54.8 percent of Saturday’s vote with almost 100 percent of ballots counted.
Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian over the past year, adopting laws similar to those used by Russia to crack down on freedom of speech. Brussels suspended Georgia’s EU membership process indefinitely because of a Russian-style “foreign influence law,” passed in June. Many Georgians viewed Saturday’s vote as a referendum on the opportunity to join the European Union.
The election campaign in the South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million people, which borders Russia, was dominated by foreign policy and marked by a bitter fight for votes and allegations of a smear campaign.
Zourabichvili suggested “Russian elections” were held in the country, and said “technology was used to whitewash counterfeiting. Such a thing has never happened before.”
European electoral observers said the election took place in a “divisive” environment marked by intimidation and instances of vote buying, double voting and physical violence.
During the campaign, Georgian Dream used “anti-Western and hostile rhetoric ... promoted Russian misinformation, manipulations, and conspiracy theories,” said Antonio López-Istúriz White, the head of the European Parliament monitoring delegation.
“Paradoxically, the government further claimed that it was continuing Georgia’s European integration,” he added.
The conduct of the polls, he said, is more evidence that points to the ruling party’s “democratic backsliding.”
President of the European Council Charles Michel said he called on Georgia’s officials to “swiftly, transparently and independently investigate” the electoral irregularities and called on the ruling party to demonstrate its “firm commitment” to the EU.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who is a member of Georgian Dream, on Sunday described his party’s victory as “impressive and obvious,” and said “any attempts to talk about election manipulation ... are doomed to failure.”
Hungary’s Victor Orbán was the first foreign leader to congratulate Georgian Dream and will be the first foreign leader to visit Georgia and meet the prime minister when he visits the capital for a visit Monday and Tuesday.
Georgian electoral observers, who were stationed across the country, also reported multiple violations and said the results do not reflect “the will of the Georgian people.”
In the capital Tbilisi, Tiko Gelashvili, 32, said, “The results that were published are just lies and rigged.”
Initial figures suggested turnout in the vote was the highest since Georgian Dream was first elected in 2012.
The United National Movement opposition party said its headquarters were attacked on Saturday while Georgian media reported two people were hospitalized after being attacked outside polling stations.
“The most important question is whether or not these elections will be recognized by the international community,” said Natia Seskuria, executive director of the Regional Institute for Security Studies in Tbilisi. Georgia’s “economic and political prospects” hinge on the election, she said.
Georgians have a complex relationship with Russia, which ruled it from Moscow until Georgia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia and Georgia fought a short war in 2008, and Moscow still occupies 20 percent of Georgia’s territory.
Despite that, Georgian Dream has adopted Russia-style laws and many Georgians fear the government is distancing the country from the West and into Moscow’s orbit.
The election observers said instances of intimidation and electoral violations were particularly noticeable in rural areas.
Georgian Dream scored its highest share of the vote — polling almost 90 percent — in the Javakheti region of southern Georgia, 135 kilometers (83 miles) west of the capital. In Tbilisi, it got no more than than 44 percent of the vote in any district.
Javakheti is predominantly agricultural and many people are ethnic Armenians who speak Armenian, Russian and limited Georgian. Before the election, the AP traveled to the region where voters suggested they were instructed how to vote by local officials. Several questioned why Georgia needed a relationship with Europe and suggested it would be better off allied with Moscow.
Georgian president won’t recognize parliamentary election result and calls public protests
https://arab.news/6tbxd
Georgian president won’t recognize parliamentary election result and calls public protests
- “This election cannot be recognized, because it is the recognition of Russia’s intrusion here, Georgia’s subordination to Russia,” Zourabichvili said
‘Extremely exciting’: the ice cores that could help save glaciers
- Thousands of glaciers will vanish each year in the coming decades, leaving only a fraction standing by the end of the century, a study says
- On the other hand, some glaciers have not only resisted melting, but even slightly grown, a phenomenon called the ‘Pamir-Karakoram anomaly’
SAPPORO: Dressed in an orange puffer jacket, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Iizuka stepped into a storage freezer to retrieve an ice core he hopes will help experts protect the world’s disappearing glaciers.
The fist-sized sample drilled from a mountaintop is part of an ambitious international effort to understand why glaciers in Tajikistan have resisted the rapid melting seen almost everywhere else.
“If we could learn the mechanism behind the increased volume of ice there, then we may be able to apply that to all the other glaciers around the world,” potentially even helping revive them, said Iizuka, a professor at Hokkaido University.
“That may be too ambitious a statement. But I hope our study will ultimately help people,” he said.
Thousands of glaciers will vanish each year in the coming decades, leaving only a fraction standing by the end of the century unless global warming is curbed, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change showed Monday.
Earlier this year, AFP exclusively accompanied Iizuka and other scientists through harsh conditions to a site at an altitude of 5,810 meters (about 19,000 feet) on the Kon-Chukurbashi ice cap in the Pamir Mountains.
The area is the only mountainous region on the planet where glaciers have not only resisted melting, but even slightly grown, a phenomenon called the “Pamir-Karakoram anomaly.”
The team drilled two ice columns approximately 105 meters (345 feet) long out of the glacier.
One will be stored in an underground sanctuary in Antarctica belonging to the Ice Memory Foundation, which supported the Tajikistan expedition along with the Swiss Polar Institute.
The other was shipped to Iizuka’s facility, the Institute of Low Temperature Science at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, where the team is hunting clues on why precipitation in the region increased over the last century, and how the glacier has resisted melting.
Some link the anomaly to the area’s cold climate or even increased use of agricultural water in Pakistan that creates more vapor.
But the ice cores are the first opportunity to examine the anomaly scientifically.
‘ANCIENT ICE’
“Information from the past is crucial,” said Iizuka.
“By understanding the causes behind the continuous build-up of snow from the past to the present, we can clarify what will happen going forward and why the ice has grown.”
Since the samples arrived in November, his team has worked in freezing storage facilities to log the density, alignment of snow grains, and the structure of ice layers.
In December, when AFP visited, the scientists were kitted out like polar explorers to cut and shave ice samples in the comparatively balmy minus 20C of their lab.
The samples can tell stories about weather conditions going back decades, or even centuries.
A layer of clear ice indicates a warm period when the glacier melted and then refroze, while a low-density layer suggests packed snow, rather than ice, which can help estimate precipitation.
Brittle samples with cracks, meanwhile, indicate snowfall on half-melted layers that then refroze.
And other clues can reveal more information — volcanic materials like sulfate ions can serve as time markers, while water isotopes can reveal temperatures.
The scientists hope that the samples contain material dating back 10,000 years or more, though much of the glacier melted during a warm spell around 6,000 years ago.
Ancient ice would help scientists answer questions such as “what kind of snow was falling in this region 10,000 years ago? What was in it?” Iizuka said.
“We can study how many and what kinds of fine particles were suspended in the atmosphere during that ice age,” he added.
“I really hope there is ancient ice.”
SECRETS IN THE ICE
For now, the work proceeds slowly and carefully, with team members like graduate student Sora Yaginuma carefully slicing samples apart.
“An ice core is an extremely valuable sample and unique,” said Yaginuma.
“From that single ice core, we perform a variety of analyzes, both chemical and physical.”
The team hopes to publish its first findings next year and will be doing “lots of trial-and-error” work to reconstruct past climate conditions, Iizuka said.
The analysis in Hokkaido will uncover only some of what the ice has to share, and with the other samples preserved in Antarctica, there will be opportunities for more research.
For example, he said, scientists could look for clues about how mining in the region historically affected the area’s air quality, temperature and precipitation.
“We can learn how the Earth’s environment has changed in response to human activities,” Iizuka said.
With so many secrets yet to learn, the work is “extremely exciting,” he added.
