Ruling party dismisses accusations of forcing teachers to campaign in run up to elections
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The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party MP Irakli Kadagishvili has dismissed reports by the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) that the GD is forcing public school directors and teachers to campaign on their behalf in elections.
ISFED says that directors who refused to campaign for the ruling party in the 2020 parliamentary elections lost their jobs.
To influence directors the ruling party used the method of unplanned inspections in schools in 2018, while for the 2020 presidential elections the party used the possibility that the term of many directors were expiring that year (and their term would not be prolonged if they refused to campaign for the party),” ISFED said.
Kadagishvili said that ISFED’s reports are ‘always very politicized and biased’ and that the organisation will not be able to name ‘even two or three’ directors who would confirm the information.
He said that the information ‘is as incorrect as ISFED’s data for the parallel vote count’ in the 2020 parliamentary elections.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) NGO says that there was an imbalance between ballots cast and signatures of registered votes in eight per cent of election districts on the parliamentary election day in Georgia, on October 31, 2020.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) is concerned about the ruling Georgian Dream’s discrediting campaign against the organisation’s election monitors, reads an official statement of the ISFED.
The head of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) Elene Nizharadze has resigned following a mistake in ISFED’s parallel vote count data. ISFED admitted to the mistake in its data of the parallel vote count earlier in December, while the data has been used by opposition parties for several weeks as evidence that the ‘October 31 parliamentary elections were fabricated’ by the ruling Georgian Dream party and the Central Election Commission. ISFED board members said that Nizharadze’s resignation came after consultations and a broad consensus in the NGO.
The ruling Georgian Dream party has asked the International Society For Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) to present the list of the eight per cent of election districts where, per the NGO, the ballots cast outnumber the signatures of registered voters. ISFED admitted to a mistake in its data of the parallel vote count on the weekend, while the data has been used so far by opposition parties ‘as evidence’ that the ‘elections were fabricated’.
The ruling Georgian Dream party claims that they will receive 44.7% of votes in the October 2 municipal elections in the western Georgian city of Kutaisi, which will elect a city council and mayor. Municipal elections are slated to be held throughout the country on the day.