2020 Elections not rigged, Parliamentary Commission concludes
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Wednesday, July 28
The Parliament of Georgia has adopted a resolution according to which the parliamentary elections held in 2020 were not rigged. The document was supported by 79 deputies, opposed by 1. Voting was held at an extraordinary sitting on July 26, which was not attended by the majority of the opposition due to distrust in the commission.
The commission worked for about 3 months and found that ‘the 2020 parliamentary elections were competitive and fundamental freedoms were respected.’ The resolution was drafted by a document of the Parliamentary Temporary Commission of Inquiry, headed by ruling party MP Givi Mikanadze.
The commission selected the 41 most problematic polling stations, where cases of excess and lack of ballot papers were recorded, of which 3 were already recounted and thus 20 polling stations were chosen by random sampling method. The Investigative Commission held 16 working meetings, addressed 22 letters to various agencies, and received appropriate responses from them. According to Mikanadze, all processes were carried out unprecedentedly transparently and were maximally accessible to any interested person and the recount process was carried out in public, at all polling stations.
According to the conclusion of the commission, the results of the recount were compared with the official data of the CEC. As a result of this process, the commission found that the data obtained by recalculating differed from the official figure ‘miserably small’ - an indicator of excess or deficiency was 0.01-0.02.
“We have detected particular problems and flaws, some technical errors, which the recount process has identified. They were due to a number of circumstances, such as a stressful environment, pandemic situation and in some cases the indifference to assigned duties or the lack of competence Commission’s member, which had no significant impact on the election results,“ Mikanadze explained, adding that no significant shortcomings or acts of falsification were found - ‘only minor flaws.’
Minakadze also said that the ‘incorrect parallel counting’ of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) escalated the situation in Georgia, damaged the country's reputation, and tarnished the image of the organization. Recall that back in December 2020, the ISFED chair resigned following an error in parallel vote count data.
The Georgian Parliament established the Parliamentary Temporary Commission of Inquiry on 17 February 2021 to investigate allegations of parliamentary election violations, which caused a six-month political standoff in the country and was largely solved following the EU-mediated agreement on April 19. The commission temporarily suspended its work during the mediation between the opposition and the gov’t in hope that all parties would be involved. However, the main part of the opposition did not participate in the commission's activities. Only 2 opposition MPs from ‘European Socialists’ that happen to be the former members of the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots, worked in the commission of inquiry, while the other 2 members of the commission were from the Georgian Dream, including the chairman.
“Politicians must have the courage to admit their mistakes. Events have shown that the scale of election fraud was not as large as previously thought. We recognized it in time, others did not,” Aleko Elisashvili, the leader of the party Citizens said.
Some opposition parties still believe that the 2020 parliamentary elections were rigged in favor of the ruling party. For this reason, they were in a boycott mode for 6 months and refused to engage in parliamentary activities until a deal was reached with the involvement of foreign partners. Finally, the parties that signed the document agreed that if the ruling party fails to get 43% of the vote in the October 2021 self-government elections, early elections will be called.
