Inter-party relations

On 26 October, the Executive Secretary of the ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) party Irakli Kobakhidze stated that the opposition party is planning to release deep-fake videos on election day. He added that the videos, which may depict members of the ruling party, including party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, would aim to mislead voters. The United National Movement (UNM) opposition party members said that the GD was becoming more and more inappropriate in the lead up to election day as response to Kobakhidze’s statement.

While presenting the GD election program in Gori, Georgia’s Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani spoke on the Georgia-Russia relations. “The de-occupation of our territories is the precondition for the restoration of relations with Russia,” he said. Zalkaliani emphasized the non-recognition of Georgia’s two Russian occupied regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) as independent states has been one of the priorities of the current government.  

The independent majoritarian candidate for Didube-Chugureti district in Tbilisi and former member of High Council of Justice of Georgia Anna Dolidze said that the government was preparing for the mass fabrication of the parliamentary elections with the use of ballot boxes. Dolidze stated that a large number of ballot boxes would be used on the election day due to the pandemic and that it would be difficult to exercise proper control over them. “The use of the ballot boxes will be legal if surveillance cameras are attached to each ballot box and all members of the commissions who carry the boxes will have their shoulder cameras switched on,” Dolidze said. She urged the opposition to raise demands on the use of shoulder cameras by commission members in charge of the ballot boxes.

Reports 

Transparency International (TI) Georgia released an interim report on alleged cases of the use of enforcement, legislative, institutional and financial administrative resources for election purposes, covering a period from 1 July to 20 October.

Regarding enforcement administrative resources, the watchdog said that the number of violent acts, including attacks on party supporters, has been growing since the second half of September, particularly in southern municipalities of Bolnisi and Marneuli. The police launched investigations into 59 cases, out of which 53 are still ongoing, the watchdog noted. The report added that police came under criticism for low rates of investigated cases. According to the report, police were even less effective in probing the seven alleged cases of property damage against political parties. 

According to the watchdog, there were also reports of three politically motivated dismissals from state-funded bodies in the reporting period. Forming district and precinct election commissions remained a problem, as some ruling party-affiliated commission members were appointed in violation of the law, the report said. The watchdog added that investigative bodies were used to discredit the opposition.  

Concerning the use of legislative administrative resources, the report said that, despite improvements, election legislation still contains some provisions that serve the interests of the ruling party, including the unfair procedure of forming election commissions. Controversial regulations to ensure the election participation of persons self-isolated and quarantined due to Covid-19 also raised questions, the watchdog added. 

Regarding institutional administrative resources, TI Georgia pointed at the practices to use state-funded projects for agitation purposes, including arranging visits to these projects. According to the interim report, there were also cases of mobilising civil servants for campaign meetings, as well as cases of illegal agitations, including through social media posts by civil servants of local municipalities in favour of the ruling Georgian Dream party. The watchdog added that the Central Election Commission (CEC) ignored such violations and did not see alleged social media agitations as subject to CEC regulations.

As for the use of financial administrative resources, according to TI Georgia, no change in the state budget has been detected significant enough to amount to a violation of the Election Code of Georgia. However, the watchdog spoke of the election-motivated expenses, including up to 20 social programs as part of the government’s Covid-19 response efforts that would affect the election environment.

The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) published its second interim report on social media pre-election monitoring, which identified 66 unofficial, anonymous and false media Facebook pages which have been working during the campaign period to discredit political parties in an organised fashion. Out of these pages, 36 pages were working against the opposition, critical media outlets, civil activists and NGOs, while 30 tried to discredit the GD. 

“The number of posts and interaction of Georgian Dream support pages significantly exceeds the number of opposition support pages. The difference in the number of interactions is likely related to the sponsorship of the posts, through which a particular post is viewed by many more users,” read the report. ISFED said that political actors spent more than $320,000 on political ads posted by parties and candidates on Facebook and Instagram during the pre-election period.

Georgia becomes a Covid-19 red zone in face of the elections 

In the past 24 hours, Georgia reported 1872 new cases and 14 deaths caused by Covid-19, bringing the total tally to 30,303 and 215 deaths. It was reported that the country passed into an “epidemiological red zone“ due to the increased daily numbers of coronavirus cases.

While explaining what it meant for the country to pass into the “red zone,” the Head of Georgia’s National Centre for Disease Control Amiran Gamkrelidze explained that the country’s epidemiologists use a so-called four-color traffic light. According to the colours (green, yellow, orange, red) epidemiologists and healthcare professionals calculate how many beds hospitals should have, how many doctors should be involved in the process and what kind of medical supplies are needed,” he said.  He added that there would not be a complete lockdown in the country, but targeted and local restrictions may be put in place in various locations.