TBILISI -- Student-led protests targeting last month's disputed elections in Georgia continued on November 15, with the Georgian Dream government that claimed victory expecting the release any day of the election watchdog's summary of last month's voting and opposition critics and President Salome Zurabishvili still refusing to recognize the results.
Police cordoned off Tbilisi State University's main building as protesters gathered and were not allowing anyone inside.
Dozens of student protesters later moved toward Ilia State University in Tbilisi and vowed to spend the night camped out there.
Students inside a building of Shota Rustaveli State University, in the Black Sea port city of Batumi, were pledging to stay inside for a second night of protest there.
On November 15, Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze ignored a journalist's question about the protests as he left a downtown meeting with Tbilisi's mayor, saying only, "The opposition is in trouble. The opposition is in trouble."
Georgia's pro-European opposition has withdrawn from the new parliament and renounced its mandates from the October 26 voting, alleging widespread fraud and Russian interference.
Representatives of the two main opposition blocs, the United National Movement (ENM) and the Coalition for Change, filed an appeal this week with the Central Election Commission (CEC) in a technical move to prevent the CEC from registering the opposition candidates who won seats as lawmakers.
The new parliament is expected to hold its first postelection session by the end of the month, with the makeup of a new government possibly to follow within days.
A presidential election should follow by early January.
President Zurabishvili has feuded for years with the governing Georgian Dream, but the crisis has boiled over in the past six months with the enactment of curbs on NGOs and media under a "foreign influence" law that Zurabishvili and other critics call a "Russian law."
The opposition has been holding large daily protests in Tbilisi since the Moscow-friendly Georgian Dream party, which has been in power for the past 12 years, claimed victory with 54 percent of the vote.
Zurabishvili said the voting showed Georgian Dream had "captured" the country.
EU and other Western officials have expressed serious doubts about the elections and perceived irregularities.
RFE/RL's Georgian Service confirmed that the Central Election Commission (CEC) was due to convene a meeting before noon on November 16, but no agenda was disclosed.
Opposition sources said they believed the commission planned to summarize the process and results of the October elections.
A protest rally was reportedly being planned near the commission building in Tbilisi at around the same time.
Additional public tensions between Georgians and their government have centered around the Georgian Dream's reluctance to join Western sanctions against Russia or supply military equipment to Ukraine as it battles the two-and-a-half-year-old full-scale Russian invasion.
Georgia's national soccer team was set to host Ukraine in a UEFA Nations League match on November 16 at Batumi Arena in that Black Sea port city.
Georgia has been a candidate for EU membership since last year.
But the "foreign influence" law and anti-LGBT measures have stalled that effort.
