On Wednesday, October 28, 2018, independent Georgian Dream-backed candidate for the presidency Salome Zurabishvili was elected Georgia's first female president. If I recall correctly this marks a third presidential election victory in a row since Georgian Dream took over after Saakashvili. Since then, "[t]housands of Georgians have staged a mass protests over the results...alleging widespread electoral fraud and demanding snap parliamentary elections." This included a 25,000-person demonstration in Tblisi's Rustavli Avenue. Former president Saakashvili has voiced his support via video from Amsterdam, where he currently lives in exile (from both Georgia and Ukraine).
Al Jazeera's reporter Forestier-Walker claims that both UNM and GD supporters "engaged in hate speech" in the runup to the election, and attributes that, more than evidence of direct fraud, as one reason for the low level of faith in democratic institutions.
While this is obviously a development that will need to play out, is it possible we are witnessing a second "color"-style revolution in Georgia? I haven't followed the news surrounding the election very closely (if at all), so I don't know how this looks in the context of events. Recall, however, that Georgia within the last calendar year alone has been rocked by
unrelated protests, and (speculating here) such may indicate a generalized feeling of dissatisfaction that the UNM could take advantage of.
