EU ambassador speaks about Aggression in Georgian Election Campaign
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Wednesday, November 14
EU ambassador in Georgia Carl Hartzell says that the Georgian election campaign is accompanied by aggression, “which is the choice of candidates.”
“We still see a rather negative pre-election campaign, but this is also a choice, this is the choice of [presidential] candidates who participate in this campaign. This is unacceptable; of course, this is hate speech and threats from different directions and different candidates. We hope that the investigation, which is underway in connection with these threats and hate speech, will be completed successfully," Hartzell said.
Georgian Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze agreed about the aggression and shifted the blame onto the United National Movement opposition.
He said that the ruling party supported presidential candidate Salome Zourabichvili stands far from aggression and hate speech.
Kobakhidze claims that the opposition is interested in stirring confrontations before the election runoff which will supposedly take place on December 2nd.
The united opposition and their presidential candidate Grigol Vashadze have made counter-accusations to the government and accused them of continued abuse of opposition members.
Other, foreign ambassadors have also evaluated the Georgian election environment.
UNDP head in Georgia said the electoral process develops in a democratic environment in Georgia and competition for presidential elections is high.
“The most important thing for UN is the elections to be held in a fair and democratic environment. We see that the electoral process is really developing in a strong democratic environment and competition is quite high. So this is a competitive environment," Louise Vinton stated.
“I would like to emphasize the importance of media in conducting elections and creating a democratic election environment. As far as you know, we are holding media monitoring together with the EU and I would like to say that media professionalism is really growing, but we also expect more analysis in media coverage in the future and the voters will receive more detailed information from media reports about what is the difference between the political parties, their programs, etc. This is a very important issue and we will continue to facilitate this process," Vinton said.
Austrian Ambassador Arad Benko says that the electoral environment is free in Georgia.
"As a rule, we, diplomats do not interfere in home affairs. It is very important to see the full picture of Georgia's development. If we look at the development of Georgia, we can say that elections are free and it is a big advantage in the initial stages. We know that the initial stages of democracy are painful and sometimes problems emerge,” he said.
The first round of elections was held on October 28 and as none of the presidential candidates were able to receive at least 51 percent of votes, the runoff will take place no later than December 2nd.
The two candidates who will run in the second round are Salome Zurabishvili and the United Opposition candidate Grigol Vashadze.
