State Department briefs media after Pompeo’s visit to Georgia
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Friday, November 20
The US State Department released the contents of the November 18 briefing to press accompanying State Secretary Mike Pompeo in Tbilisi, discussing Georgia's post-election political impasse, state of its judiciary, and the US-Georgia partnership.
Regarding the elections, a Senior Official One, presumably Ambassador Kelly Degnan noted that Georgia has had flawed elections pretty much for the last 30 years and that “we saw similar types of violations in this election as well: vote-buying, voter intimidation, the abuse of administrative resources in terms of bringing civil servants out to vote.” Degnan also criticised the lack of short-term observers due to COVID and shared others’ assessment, as well as OSCE’s.
"These were competitive elections, better in some ways – less hate speech, less of some of the more aggressive tactics before the elections. This one respected fundamental freedoms in terms of freedom of expression, but that they too observed violations like the vote buying and the voter intimidation that unfortunately have plagued Georgia’s elections for 30 years. Our statement from the embassy reflected that."
It was also said at the briefing that the US is encouraging the opposition that announced a boycott to the next parliament, to 'fight for change' within the legislative body. It was also underlined that many Georgias don’t have confidence in the judicial system and the central election commission - the institutions that are 'in the process of developing.' According to Degnan, her and the EU ambassador’s message to the opposition was the following: “You’ve been elected by your supporters to go into the parliament and make change.”
“What gave many of us pause is the results, the tabulations were not that far off. The official results were very within, in some cases, percentage points of the PVTs that were done by the local observers. And so it wasn’t immediately clear that these were sort of fatally flawed elections,” Degnan said, adding that they were encouraging everybody to use the legal processes Georgians have built over the years to adjudicate these claims. She also underlined that recounts were not handled as transparently as they should have been by the Central Election Commission, which added to the sense of suspicion of results’ credibility.
Degnan reminded that some of the problems of this election should have been included in electoral reform that was done during the summer."
The Senior State Department Official added that Georgia has been a great partner in terms of security, militarily, and so what the Secretary wants to underscore is support for Georgia’s sovereignty. He mentioned that given that 20% of the country is occupied by Russia, it’s important that we continue to push back against that element of instability created by Moscow.
Georgian opposition parties say they do not plan to enter the ‘rigged’ parliament - the boycott continues. They also refuse to take part in second round elections, which are scheduled this saturday - November 21 in the 17 majoritarian constituencies. A total of 1914 polling stations will be opened. Organizing and conducting the second round will cost the election administration ?8.6 million.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Georgia on an official visit on November 17. Next day the meetings were held with representatives of the Government of Georgia, the Patriarchate and the civil sector.
