Sawt Falasteen - Georgia PM vows sweeping crackdown after 'foiled coup'

Saturday's local 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.

- 'Attempted coup' -

The interior ministry said on Saturday 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.

Among those arrested was a world-renowned opera singer and activist Paata Burchuladze who read out at the rally -- to loud applause -- a declaration claiming "power returns to the people," branding the government "illegitimate" and announcing a transition.

The pro-opposition Pirveli TV reported that the 70-year-old, was detained in the intensive care unit of a Tbilisi hospital, where he was being treated for a heart attack.

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

- 'Severe reprisals' -

"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.

Rights groups say some 60 people -- among them key opposition figures, journalists and activists -- have been jailed over the past year.

Amnesty International said the elections were "taking place amid severe political reprisals against opposition figures and civil society".

In power since 2012, the party has faced accusations of democratic backsliding, drifting towards Russia and derailing Georgia's EU-membership bid enshrined in the country's constitution.

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

Analysts say its blunt pitch -- claiming that the opposition wants war, but it wants peace -- resonates in rural areas and is amplified by disinformation.

A recent survey by the Institute of Social Studies and Analysis put the party's approval rating at about 36 percent, against 54 percent for opposition groups.

O.Salim--SF-PST