Sawt Falasteen - Georgia PM announces sweeping crackdown on opposition after 'foiled coup'

Saturday's polls were the ruling populist Georgian Dream party's first electoral test since a disputed parliamentary vote a year ago plunged the Black Sea nation into turmoil and prompted Brussels to effectively freeze the EU-candidate country's accession bid.

The central election commission said Georgian Dream had secured municipal council majorities in every municipality, and that its candidates scored landslide wins in mayoral races in all cities.

The normally low-key local elections have acquired high stakes after months of raids on independent media, restrictions on civil society and the jailing of dozens of opponents and activists.

On Saturday, tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators flooded Tbilisi's Freedom Square after the opposition urged a "last-chance" election-day protest to save democracy.

A group of protesters later tried to enter the presidential palace, prompting riot police to use tear gas and water cannons to repel the crowd.

The Interior Ministry said on Saturday that it had opened an investigation into "calls to violently alter Georgia's constitutional order or overthrow state authority" and arrested five protest leaders who face up to nine years in prison.

"Several people have already been arrested -- first and foremost the organisers of the attempted overthrow," Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze told journalists.

"No one will go unpunished... many more must expect sentences for the violence they carried out against the state and law-enforcement."

The government has "foiled an attempted coup planned by foreign intelligence services," he said earlier without giving details of his claim.

"This political force -- the foreign agents' network -- will be completely neutralised and will no longer be allowed to be active in Georgian politics," he said referring to Georgia's main opposition force, jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili's United National Movement.

Saakashvili had urged supporters to stage a "last-chance" election-day protest to "save Georgian democracy."

Georgian Dream has vowed to ban all major opposition parties.

In power since 2012, it has faced accusation of democratic backsliding, drifting towards Russian orbit, and derailing Georgia's EU-membership bid enshrined in the country's constitution.

The party rejects the accusations, saying it is safeguarding "stability" in the country of four million while a Western "deep state" seeks to drag Georgia into the war in Ukraine with the help of opposition parties.

O.Farraj--SF-PST