Parliament Speaker rejects “disinformation” of allegations of irregularities in parliamentary elections

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Monday responded to allegations of irregularities in the parliamentary elections held last Saturday, as voiced by the domestic opposition, by rejecting the claims as “disinformation”.

The lawmaker was responding to allegations including violation of secrecy of ballot and ruling party’s mobilisation of voters.

In comments over the alleged violations of secrecy of votes, he cited the 2020 Polish and 2024 Bulgarian parliamentary elections, where he said transparent boxes and ballot papers without envelopes had been used.

He also cited the 2024 Lithuanian parliamentary elections and 2024 Moldovan presidential elections, claiming similar practices there.

Presentation of Election-Related Disinformation

On allegations of mobilisation of voters, Papuashvili said Nino Lomjaria, the former Public Defender of Georgia, had shared “personal information of voters in a context that marked individuals as targets for attack”.

Papuashvili also cited guidelines by the United States-based National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute, which he said noted that “it does not matter how good your ratings are in the polls, if your voters do not go out on election day”.

The Parliament official said the guidelines also called for “creating database of voters with names, phone numbers, and for contacting all supporters and reminding them to go vote one week before the elections”.

It’s a complete fake, disinformation, as if compiling and organising lists of voters and supporters, and contacting with them, is something that is not familiar to any Georgian practice”, he said.

”[I]n every election, every party that has the resources to do it, and to some extent, more or less big parties - every party works like this”, the Speaker noted.

He further responded to claims about reasons for the “high support” of the ruling party by saying the Georgian Dream had “appointed delegates in all districts throughout the country and had all delegates with  ties to the specific regions”.

The opposition did not have a single delegate. They had no candidates from the regions or ethnic groups on their party lists. They ran almost no campaign in the region. They relied on television and foreigners”, the Speaker claimed.

He added that at 3,111 precincts, 25,000 opposition commission members had written a total of nine differing opinions, while out of the 3,111 precincts, results from 366 had been recounted by random selection, with only 32 undergoing minor corrections.