Georgian ruling party claims win in disputed election

Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party has triumphed in parliamentary elections, receiving more than 54 per cent of the vote, the country's electoral commission says.

The result is a blow to pro-Western Georgians, who had cast the election as a choice between a ruling party that has deepened ties with Russia, and an opposition that had hoped to fast-track integration with the European Union.

Several local and international monitoring organisations, including the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), are expected to comment on the results on Sunday.

But opposition parties said they did not recognise the results, with one leader calling them "a constitutional coup".

But Georgian Dream's reclusive billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, who had campaigned heavily on keeping Georgia out of the war in Ukraine, claimed success with his party putting in its strongest performance since 2012 on the back of huge margins in some rural areas.

"It is a rare case in the world that the same party achieves such success in such a difficult situation - this is a good indicator of the talent of the Georgian people," Ivanishvili told cheering supporters on Saturday night.

Ivanishvili's Georgian Dream said it wanted Georgia to join the European Union, though Brussels said the country's membership application was frozen over what it described as the party's authoritarian tendencies.

One local monitoring organisation called for the results to be annulled, based on reports of voter intimidation and vote buying, but it did not immediately provide evidence of large-scale falsification.

The Unity electoral alliance, which includes the opposition United National Movement, reportedly received around 10 per cent of votes, behind the Coalition for Change camp on around 11 per cent.

Four pro-European opposition blocs, that surpassed the five per cent threshold collectively, accounted for 38 per cent of the vote, according to the electoral commission.

Speaking in the capital Tbilisi, Tinatin Bokuchkva, the leader of the United National Movement, charged late on Saturday that the election commission had "carried out the dirty work of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili".

The pro-Western opposition alliance, the Coalition for Change, also declared that it would not recognise the results.

"The elections have been stolen from the opposition. This is a constitutional coup and an abuse of power," politician Nika Gvaramia told a press conference.