Special Commission of Georgian Parliament to investigate possible election violations

On February 17, the Georgian Parliament announced the creation of a temporary commission that will investigate the conduct of the October 2020 Parliamentary Elections and assess whether any of the alleged violations took place.

The bill to create a special commission, authored by the member of the ruling Georgian Dream party Mamuka Mdinaradze, was passed with 78 votes. The commission is created for three months, and, according to Mdinaradze, members of the opposition bloc are welcome to join the commission to clear out any questions regarding the election results as the door to participate in the committee 'remains open'.

As of now, the only members of the opposition bloc who expressed their readiness to participate in the investigation are the former members of the Alliance of Patriots party and the founders of the new European Socialists party Davit Ziplimani and Prison Injia. Members of the Citizens party, Levan Ioseliani and Aleko Elisashvili, attended the plenary hearing during which the bill to form a commission was discussed but refused to join the committee without other politicians, including the members of the United National Movement.

Speaker of the Parliament and a member of the Georgian Dream Archil Talakvadze said that according to the international observers, the Parliamentary Elections of October 2020 were both competitive and carried out with the respect for fundamental freedoms. He added that it is in everyone’s interest to determine the shortcomings of the past elections that the international observers cited in their reports, and to find out the truth together.

A large number of opposition parties believe that the parliamentary elections of last year were rigged, and, to this day, boycott their mandates and demand the repeat elections to be held. Last year, the ruling party promised to satisfy the repeated calls for re-elections if the investigation of the special parliamentary commission determines that at least 1% of votes were rigged or falsified.

The current Chairman and a former Executive Secretary of the Georgian Dream Irakli Kobakhidze announced in December last year that he is confident that not even 0.1% of votes received by the ruling party are illegal. Despite the efforts of the diplomatic corps who mediated the talks between the ruling party and the opposition, the agreement to end the ongoing political crisis has not been reached yet.