Georgian PM claims ISFED NGO “directly involved in election campaigning”

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Monday claimed the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, a non-governmental organisation, was “directly involved in election campaigning” ahead of the upcoming parliamentary vote scheduled for October 26.

Kobakhidze noted the Government had invited monitoring missions from the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and various parliamentary assemblies to monitor the upcoming elections.

We fully cooperate with foreign partners in election observation. As for specific organisations, among them NGOs ISFED, Transparency International, etc., they claim to observe these elections objectively, [but] they are directly involved in election campaigning. They directly name election subjects - how they can carry out objective observation in such a situation?”, he said.

“I would like to remind you that NGO ISFED is the organisation that rigged the results of the parallel vote tabulation during the previous parliamentary elections four years ago. They directly rigged it. [...] It took five weeks for them to admit this. In fact, it was a forgery and that’s why they had refused to admit it”, the PM continued.

Givi Mikanadze, an MP of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Thursday rejected recent pre-election monitoring report by NGO ISFED by calling it “absurd and baseless” and accusing the organisation of “promoting polarisation” ahead of the elections.

Mikanadze criticised the report for “failing to address” what he described as an “ongoing campaign” by unspecified non-governmental organisations for framing the forthcoming vote as a “choice between Europe and non-Europe”.

The lawmaker argued the campaign, “aimed at polarising voters”, had been “ignored” by the ISFED in its assessment.