Georgia's Central Election Commission calls on Prosecutor’s Office to launch investigation into President, politicians’ accusations of election fraud

Georgia's Central Election Commission on Tuesday called on the country’s Prosecutors Office to “launch an investigation” into recent claims of Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili and other politicians about rigging Saturday’s parliamentary elections, the CEC said.

Zourabichvili, along with four domestic opposition parties, which have overcome the five percent electoral threshold in the elections on Monday dismissed the results as “rigged”. She also told CNN the ruling Georgian Dream party had “used IDs taken from citizens seven times, 10 times, 17 times” during the voting. 

In its response, the CEC said the election administration was reviewing existing complaints, however, due to the “large-scale campaign” of claims from several politicians on “alleged election fraud”, it required a complex and objective investigation, which was “beyond the competence of the administration”.

The CEC further pointed out its administration was “ready to cooperate with the investigation and provide it with all interesting, necessary information”. 

The body also claimed the President was “trying to discredit the election administration, which has organised the most important elections at the highest level, at the international level”.

Even though the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission has assessed the elections positively and the work of the CEC at the highest level, and at the same time, the audit conducted by the American company could not identify any shortcomings, the Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili and representatives of some political parties are groundlessly attacking the CEC, trying to harm its reputation with false accusations”, the Commission said.

The CEC added that just after the announcement of the parliamentary election results on Saturday, it had become an “object of attack and baseless criticism”.