Today, a briefing was held at the Election Administration (EA) of Georgia pertaining to threat and pressure conducted against its staff members. The briefing has been arranged by Deputy Chairperson of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Giorgi Sharabidze.

As Giorgi Sharabidze highlighted, the EA conducts its activities is accordance with legislation, and each process is open and public for stakeholders. Despite, the organization is still an object of baseless accusations and pressure.

“This time, the prevocational behavior has been conducted against the representatives of the CEC Legal Department. One of the Political Council Members of the United National Movement used slander towards our colleagues, exerted pressure and tried to showcase the real facts in misleading way in front of the media. The mentioned prevocational incident took place yesterday during the trial at the Tbilisi City Court, involving the topic of establishing Precinct Election Commissions in the foreign countries. Moreover, the incident continued outside the Court building, in the yard following the trial process.

We would like to call upon both the local and international observer organizations to express interest in the present prevocational conduct and not to leave it without proper consideration, since such behavior damages the electoral environment. When the electoral process is marred by hate speech, slander, and personal attacks against election administrators, the integrity of the elections is directly compromised.

We would like to remind the public that the EA of Georgia has recently disseminated the statement along with the Public Defender, and called upon the stakeholders to display high political and civic responsibility, promote the conduct of election campaign that is pluralistic and free from violence and hate speech. Accordingly, in any such case, it is important to have a proper response, considering the prevention of such facts in the future. Importantly, we ensure that the Public Defender, observer organizations, and international partners are provided with all pertinent information.

On our part, we would like to emphasize, that Election Administration will protect the dignity of each staff member and use every measure for eliminating the facts similar to the prevocational incident that happened at the Tbilisi City Court. Additionally, we would like to highlight that the EA will keep organizing its activities solely as per the legislation and ensure that the elections are conducted in compliance with international standards”.