Givi Mikanadze, MP from the Georgian Dream, talks about the facts of interference in the pre-election process, influence on voters, violence, threats, and the use of administrative resources.

“Taking into account the best international practices, the election administration has developed a “code of conduct for political parties” for political parties, which is based on the main principles of the document used for the European Parliament elections in 2024. Before the signing process, the election administration sent the draft of the Code of Conduct to the parties for familiarization and presentation of opinions, and the final version was developed taking into account their opinions. Finally, out of 27 parties registered for the parliamentary elections, only six parties signed the Code of Conduct (the deadline for signing expired on September 13). According to the CEC, there are six signatory parties: Georgian Dream, Change Georgia, European Democrats, For Justice, Third Way and Our United Georgia. None of the main opposition parties signed the document.

On September 14, information was spread in the opposition media, as if the members appointed by European Georgia, United National Movement and Strategy Agmashenebeli were prevented from observing the process of conducting qualification-raising trainings for the members of the Precinct Election Commission in Isni and Mtatsminda district election commissions. The information posted on the official website of the CEC confirms that in order to ensure a high standard of transparency in the election process, the election administration gives the observation organizations and members appointed by the parties in the district election commissions the opportunity to observe the mentioned trainings, without hindering their progress. A large part of them are taking advantage of this opportunity. In the above-mentioned case, the members appointed by the specified parties tried to interfere with the training, further presenting the issue as if they were not given the opportunity to observe the process.

On September 18, the public was informed by the briefing of the deputy chairman of the CEC that during the campaign of informing the voters by some involved parties, contradictory, incorrect and illegal information regarding the manner of filling out the ballots, secrecy of voting and counting of votes was spread through the media. In particular, in the statement made by the representative of the observation mission “My Voice” on the air of TV Pirveli on September 5, he directly called on the voters to color one circle in front of the election subject, then cross it and color another circle and “assured” the voters that by hand During the recount, the election administration will be forced to consider such ballots as genuine, even though the machine considers them invalid. In the same context, he mentioned the possibility of taking photos of ballot papers in the voting booth, as if it were allowed by law. Also, another statement by the same representative of the aforementioned organization was broadcast on Formula TV on September 15, which is somewhat contradictory to the information made and presented on September 5, but at the same time, it is still against the law and manipulative. In this case, the applicant says that photo-videography is prohibited, but in the evaluations he still allows the possibility of photo-videography in the secret voting booth. All this serves to create a certain chaotic situation, because an illegal and misleading information campaign may lead to voter confusion and such a negative result that may threaten the integrity of the elections.

And finally, once again, I would like to emphasize that despite our repeated public and systematic disclosure of specific violations, until now, local monitoring organizations such as “Young Lawyers Association”, “Fair Elections”, “Transparency Georgia”, neither previous nor None of the facts disclosed in this briefing were reflected in their report and they did not even make a basic statement, which clearly proves their bias and positioning in favor of a particular party.

We would like to inform you here that today the promised report was uploaded to the Georgian Dream Facebook page, which reflects the violations we discovered from June 1 to September 15”, - said Givi Mikanadze.