Tbilisi: Shalva Papuashvili, the speaker of parliament of Georgia presented report of OSCE(Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) in parliament. As per report Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is ready to work in tandem with the Georgian government.
While speaking about the report he said, “I would like to present the main findings of the OSCE/ODIHR final report on the parliamentary elections, which as expected, are in line with the assessments of the Georgian Dream. Importantly, the OSCE/ODIHR mission expresses its readiness to work with the elected authorities of Georgia to further improve the electoral environment and procedures.”
He also noted that, I would like to note that the final report reiterates the main conclusion of the OSCE/ODIHR preliminary report that on 26 October voters had a broad choice and that political parties were able to “campaign freely”.
It is emphasized that the campaign was conducted in a peaceful environment and that some isolated cases of violence were reported from both the ruling party and the opposition.
The report particularly commends the election administration for well-organizing and administering the elections. The CEC was also commended by the OSCE for the timely publication of the election results and the State Services Development Agency for the effective compilation of the unified voter list.
At the same time the report also notes that on election day, the election process was assessed positively in more than 90% of precincts and the processing of election documentation was assessed positively in all 73 election districts.
According to the report, the OSCE is concerned about the subordination of television stations to political and business interests. The OSCE emphasizes that during the elections, commercial television stations were used for political propaganda, which undermined independent journalism and strengthened adversarial political rhetoric.
Moreover, the report emphasizes that the opposition avoided participating in debates on the public broadcaster. It is welcome that unlike other observers, the OSCE/ODIHR report reflected the problem we raised when three opposition-owned television stations, in violation of the law did not allow us to use free advertising time in their media and in total deprived us of more than five hours of free advertising time.
