Head of ISFED: We conceal nothing, but have information distribution own strategy

The election administration and the ruling Georgian Dream party should apologize because it was their election, problems on their side, be that imbalances or carousels, the Head of ISFED, Elene Nizharadze, said.

According to her, the government did not respond to many violations, did not study them, and did not provide objective information to the public.

It caused the political crisis and not the PVT results by ISFED, which reported a tiny error margin that subsequently led to a small percentage difference, Nizharadze said.

When asked about GD Executive Secretary Irakli Kobakhidze’s statement regarding the shortfall of four mandates for the ruling party, Nizharadze responded that this information is false.

“This is not correct information because they probably consider the results of the second round. In this case, our results relied only on the proportional results of the first round. There was no difference in this part. The problems that existed during these parliamentary elections were imbalances, carousels, voter bribery, revised protocols, and so on. The public did not see these problems addressed. Consequently, they created a crisis and a problem. I think it would not have been a problem today if they had reacted and studied it timely,” Nizharadze said.

Commenting on GD’s statement that the ISFED Head knew about the gross flaw at the end of November, Nizharadze responded that the organization had its strategy on how to provide information to the public.

“We concealed nothing. We had our strategy on how to provide information to the public, and we have been working on that. We had to prepare a report, hold a press conference. The Georgian Dream has been holding disgraceful negotiations in the presence of the ambassadors, having provided them incorrect information, saying we knew it was false and used it in the negotiation process. I do not want to evaluate it toughly, but it is a very dishonest behavior, to put it mildly,” Nizharadze said.

As for the recent call of the ruling team for the ISFED to submit as soon as possible a list of precincts where the organization detected an excess of ballot papers, Nizharadze responded that they could search the protocols on the CEC website and request them from the CEC. According to her, these are official protocols, and ISFED does not have any other protocols.

“We have filed complaints and called for a recount of the precincts where the problems were observed be that imbalance, or corrected protocols. They can find these protocols on the CEC website and request them from the CEC. These are official protocols; we do not have any others. Therefore, they should ask the election administration to respond to these protocols, but the Georgian Dream is very shamefully trying to create the impression that ISFED has held these elections and compiled the protocols. The election administration is responsible for the protocols, and it has to inform the public about the problems it had. But it did not do that. It strengthens the public doubt that they had some more serious problems rather than a technical flaw. Otherwise, it is not clear why these precincts were not recounted. They could have done it very easily, and any doubts would have erose,” said Elene Nizharadze.

The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) reported on the technical fault in the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) of the October 31 parliamentary elections on December 11. However, the Head of the organization claims the error margin is minor and does not affect the final results. The audited PTV results by ISFED now coincide with the final results of the CEC, taking into account the accuracy margin.