Ruling party receives 90 percent of whole election donations
Thursday, October 19
Georgia’s State Audit Office reads in its interim report, covering 1July-17 October, that the whole amount of donations received by all parties’ amounts to 12,998,651 GEL.
Nearly 90 percent of the money - 11,640,441 - was received by the Georgian Dream party.
“Most of the money in the pre-election period was spent by Georgian Dream, the European Georgia opposition, and the Alliance of Patriots opposition,” says the report released ahead of the October 21 municipal elections.
According to the interim report, 8,835,900 GEL was spent in total in the 6-week period.
The Georgian Dream spent 6,983,756 GEL, European Georgia - Movement for Freedom 646,775 GEL, the Alliance of Patriots of Georgia 507,730 GEL, the United National Movement - 202.811 GEL, Democratic Movement United Georgia 75.892 GEL, Civic Platform New Georgia - 66.084 GEL.
A total of 5,805,562 GEL was spent on advertising by the parties.
According to the interim report, the budgetary income amounted to 742,787 GEL; in particular, 173,420 GEL was received from the Georgian Dream, 135,036 GEL from the United National Movement, 78,844 GEL from European Georgia - Movement for Freedom, 20,135 GEL from the Democratic Movement - United Georgia, and 16,293 GEL from the Civil Platform - New Georgia.
The Audit Agency started studying how legal the donation process was.
The opposition parties say that the ruling party may use the administrative resources in the election period.
Georgia’s Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze said that the opposition parties are not honest when showing out their election incomes.
Member of the Georgian Dream Eka Beselia says that the ruling party has “the biggest number” of voters and it is no surprise that the party had the received most donations.
