Political center Girchi presents three new projects before the elections

By Anastasia Sokhadze

Tuesday, July 14

Although the raffle may seem bizarre and out of place, the party thinks of it as an encouragement for the citizens to vote.

The alleged signs of bribery show up with the raffle, according to the director of ISFED.

The first project of the party is the newspaper. According to Zurab Japaridze, one of the leaders, the name of the newspaper will be named ‘More Freedom.’ The project manager is Iago Khvichia and it will be published regularly. The first paper has already been published.

The second project of the party is the website www.girchi.com where citizens will get acquainted with the party members and their views on the economy, education, justice and other issues.

Girchi's third pre-election project is a TESLA car raffle.

The party is going to play a Tesla car for the citizens who come to the elections. The party spreads the information about it, saying that any citizen can participate in the raffle, but this requires several conditions to be met, including registration on the party's website and taking a photo at the polling station on the election day to confirm that they have arrived to vote.

"It is important for Girchi for as many people as possible to take part in the elections held this year. Girchi is not going to take money from taxpayers. We thought a lot about what to do with this money and decided to use it to increase the motivation of citizens to come to the polls. With the budget money for the party, we will buy a Tesla car. The more votes Girchi gets, the more budget funding there will be, and the more Tesla cars will be given out,” stated the party.

According to the Georgian legislation, in case of receiving the first 50 thousand votes, the party receives GEL15 from the budget for each vote, and GEL5 for each subsequent vote.

The leader of the majority in the parliament, Mamuka Mdinaradze responded to Girchi’s initiative, saying “they smoke too much in the party.”

Elene Nizharadze, Executive Director of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), sees signs of voter bribery in Girchi’s lottery.

Although the lottery is not only aimed at Girchi’s voters, Nizharadze explains that we are dealing with the financial interest of the voters.

According to the head of ISFED, such calls for the creation of a political culture are not good and are low standards, as it will not contribute to the development of democratic processes in the country.

Party leader Zurab Japaridze believes that the initiative has nothing to do with voter bribery, but the civil society thinks otherwise. As Japaridze said at the presentation of the project, it does not matter which political party the voter will vote for. According to him, the purpose of the raffle is to encourage voters to go to the polls. As he explained, they are going to buy a Tesla car with the money that the party will receive from the state if it enters parliament.