Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan has congratulated to Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze for the ruling Georgian Dream party’s “impressive” victory in the country’s parliamentary election on Saturday.

“I warmly congratulate the "Georgian Dream" party on its impressive victory in the parliamentary elections of Georgia,” Pashinyan wrote in a statement released yesterday.

Pashinyan said he hoped the strategic partnership between Armenia and Georgia will develop and thus lead to regional stability and progress.

The country’s Central Election Commission said the ruling Georgian Dream won 54.8% of Saturday’s vote with almost all the ballots counted.

Julian Bulai, head of the PACE delegation monitoring the polls, however, said the election was marred with vote-buying, a widespread climate of pressure and party-organized intimidation.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, a former Georgian Dream ally who left the party and became a critic of it, has said she doesn’t recognize the results. Describing the election as a  “Russian special operation”, she has called on Georgians to take to the streets in protest.

Photo: Pashinyan and Kobakhidze shake hands at March 2024 meeting in Yerevan. (@primeinister.am)