Georgian PM highlights OSCE/ODIHR findings on elections as “positive”

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on Thursday claimed the findings of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe for Human Rights and Democracy over Saturday’s parliamentary elections were overall “positive”.

In his interview with Imedi TV, Kobakhidze noted that the elections had been conducted “cleanly”, and further pointed out that “we are absolutely open, whoever wants may verify it”.

Overall, the OSCE/ODIHR report is positive, as far as the critical part is concerned, there are general phrases in this report, dealing with bribery, use of [administrative] resources, intimidation, etc. When it comes to stuffing ballots, we asked the monitoring mission how many cases there were, and [they responded] that there were two cases, no more. That is, out of 3,111 precincts, only two such cases were recorded. One case concerned a representative of the Georgian Dream party, an investigation was immediately launched, the precinct was immediately closed, and the second case referred to a person holding [the opposition] Lelo party’s ballots, and even there this person was not given the opportunity to do so”, the PM said.

“As for the bribery, out of thousand polling stations, ten cases were identified when someone was giving money to somebody. I don't know if it happened or not, I'm not sure about that either, because many intriguers were involved in the election process, but let's say it happened, that is, different observers saw 10 cases of someone giving money to someone. Ten cases of alleged bribery in a thousand precincts, where 700,000 voters went. This shows that there was neither a systemic nor an essential problem in terms of voter bribery”, he continued. 

He further added that recent OSCE/ODIHR practice from other countries was that the organisation was no longer using the terminology of “free and fair elections” at all, as “it often becomes a matter of speculation”.

“The main thing is the overall content of the OSCE/ODIHR conclusion and the entire content is positive. When the press conference was held, its participants were directly speaking about the legitimacy of the elections, not only OSCE/ODIHR. The [international] observers were directly speaking about the elected Government, which means that the legitimacy of the elections was recognised by international observers, and no one objected to these statements during that press conference”, Kobakhidze noted.

The head of the Government stressed that everyone should “come to terms” with the fact that Georgia was a state and relevant institutions were responsible for investigation, inspection and verification, in response to the calls of the country’s international partners to investigate the allegations over the election fraud.