Parliament official confident OSCE/ODIHR monitoring will find “no reason” to issue negative opinion on elections

Nikoloz Samkharadze, the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Georgian Parliament, on Thursday said the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe would have “no reason” to issue a “negative” opinion on the organisation and holding of the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for October 26.

In his interview with Imedi TV, Samkharadze claimed the pre-election environment in the country was  “competitive”.

If any international observation mission, specifically the OSCE/ODIHR, says that these elections do not comply with international standards, it must have a [solid] basis for this. However, it will not have this basis, because Georgia has a competitive pre-election environment, considering all aspects”, the Parliament official said.

The official highlighted the introduction of electronic technology in the upcoming elections, and further pointed out that “all speculations we had in [the] 2020 [parliamentary elections] will be ruled out [this time]”.

He also claimed the domestic opposition would “still go to the streets” because “these are shameless people, and as they claimed in 2020 that the elections had been rigged, they will say the same this year”.

Samkharadze expressed his confidence that this year the ruling party’s “victory” would be “more convincing” than in 2020.