Ruling party criticizes interim election reports of local observing organisations
The ruling Georgian Dream party has presented its assessment on interim election reports of local observing organisations. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
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The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party has criticised interim election reports of Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia), Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) and International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) ahead of the October 2 municipal elections.
The GD says that interim reports by the organisations cover several incidents which took place before the official launch of the pre-election campaigning.
The incidents or activities which took place before August 3, before the official launch of pre-election campaigning, must not be connected with the upcoming race,” GD MP Shalva Papuashvili stated earlier today.
Papuashvili said that ‘there is a tendency’ in the interim reports to say that ‘violations observed are not violations, but are bad practices which damage the election environment.’
Such notes are confusing and hard for readers to differentiate whether an incident is a violation of law or just does not correspond to the organisation’s inner standards,” Papuashvili said.
He also stated that interim reports cover the cases ‘which are biased or are based on an interested party, without providing any evidence.’
Papuashvili urged the organisations to remove the cases from their reports which were evidenced were not violations.
International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) has identified 20 pages on social media which were campaigning against the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party ahead of the October 2 municipal elections and 25 anti-opposition pages.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) has finished counting votes for the second round of the parliamentary elections in Georgia with the ruling Georgian Dream party winning all of the 17 majoritarian constituencies and the mayoral by-elections in Kutaisi.
The Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) and International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) have reported election violations in a number of majoritarian constituencies during the second round of parliamentary elections in Georgia.
A survey carried out by Transparency International Georgia says that almost half of majoritarian candidates presented by parties in the October 31 parliamentary elections are business owners or are connected with business activities.