“There is not even a democratic, but rather a hybrid regime, leaning towards autocracy, where OSCE/ODIHR does not observe the elections,” said Tazo Datunashvili, a member of the Lelo party.

According to Datunashvili, the Georgian Dream (GD) party wants to conduct elections without monitoring.

“This happens only in severe autocracies. We have entered this phase. The country faces a serious problem which becomes acute in seconds, minutes and hours. We should remove this malicious regime from this country because this has to do with not only Georgian democracy but also our statehood and daily life. We might not be able to exist at all and end up living in some big open-air prison,” he said.

The British Embassy in Georgia called on the Georgian government to extend an invitation to ODIHR/OSCE to observe October’s municipal elections and take forward all recommendations in ODIHR’s final report on the 2024 parliamentary election.

“Those who fully ignored the OSCE/ODIHR opinion now urge us to invite the mission to observe October’s municipal elections. Local elections will be held in a healthy form,” said Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.

The PM further noted that, according to the standard practice, the mission is invited to observe the parliamentary elections, though there are cases when the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission is invited to monitor local elections as an exception. “Therefore, we believe that it is not worth overloading them with local elections,” he said.