It is good that the anti-corruption bureau shared our respective call - in the pre-election period, it would not be appropriate to grant such a status to the Transparency International - Georgia [TI] or similar organizations, it simply does not give anything. Such a statement made today the Prime Minister of Georgia.

“I want to thank the Anti-Corruption Bureau for sharing my and our position on this issue. I would like to clarify once again, it is clear to everyone that specific organizations, including “Transparency International – Georgia” are acting for the political and electoral purpose announced today. They have a declared election agenda. They are directly involved in election campaign-propaganda. There is direct evidence of this. They do not hide this either, therefore, the anti-corruption bureau made an absolutely logical decision at the time when these organizations were given the status of organizations with declared election goals. However, one is a purely legal approach and the other is state expediency.

Of course, the Anti-Corruption Bureau is not a political body, hence, it acts essentially by legal criteria, purely legal criteria from the beginning to the end. We have the opportunity to depart from the criterion of state expediency along with pure legal criteria, when we discuss relevant issues. Based on this, we submitted a corresponding appeal to the Anti-Corruption Bureau. We considered that it would not be appropriate in the pre-election period, despite the existence of appropriate conditions, for TI to grant such a status to such organizations for one simple reason - it simply does not provide anything. All it does is give some people an excuse to speculate. TI will not surprise anyone with its election observations, it did not surprise anyone in 2020, and even more so, it will not surprise anyone in 2024, its reputation has been damaged. Therefore, it would be better not to give anyone an excuse to speculate. It is good that the Anti-Corruption Bureau has shared our respective calls. In this case, it would not be appropriate to act with purely legal criteria, and that is what our appeal to the Anti-Corruption Bureau was based on”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.