Georgia’s prime minister has hailed a “landslide” election result, rejecting allegations of vote-rigging and violence.

“Irregularities happen everywhere,” Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party told the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in an exclusive interview.

Official preliminary results from Georgia’s election commission gave the ruling Georgian Dream an outright majority of 54%, despite exit polls for opposition TV channels suggesting four opposition parties had won.

Georgia’s pro-Western president, Salome Zourabichvili, has condemned the “total falsification” of the vote and called for opposition supporters to rally outside parliament on Monday.

Election observers have suggested that the number of vote violations may have affected the result. However, the prime minister insisted that out of 3,111 polling stations, there had been incidents in “just a couple of precincts”.

Georgian Dream has become increasingly authoritarian, passing Russian-style laws targeting media and non-government groups who receive foreign funding and the LGBT community. The European Union has responded by freezing Georgia’s bid to join the EU, accusing it of “democratic backsliding”.

However, one EU leader, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, has been especially quick to congratulate the party on its fourth term and is due to travel to Georgia on Monday.