Parliament Speaker urges election observers to “focus on facts, not perceptions” ahead of vote

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Tuesday urged delegations tasked with observing the upcoming general elections on October 26 to “learn from the lessons we learned” in the 2020 parliamentary elections in the country and “focus on facts, not perceptions”.

Papuashvili recalled the Government’s efforts to “correct an error” in a line of European Council resolution that had cited an “excess of ballots” in eight percent of the polling stations during the 2020 vote.

The Parliament Speaker noted he had met a delegation of the pre-election mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe earlier on Tuesday, as well as with Eoghan Murphy, the head of the observation mission of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights on Monday.

Papuashvili said the meetings with the delegations reviewed the country’s pre-election processes, which he said were taking place in a “more or less peaceful environment”, as well as activities and plans of delegations.

The lawmaker noted he had “expressed concerns” regarding “involvement” of local monitoring organisations in the election campaign, and requested the OSCE delegation to “give this matter due consideration”.