Owen Murphy, Head of the OSCE/ODIHR observation mission in Georgia said that 15 teams work in Georgia, and each has its own zone area for observation They meet election administration representatives, political parties and local media.

According to Owen Murphy, the OSCE/ODIHR is slated to make a preliminary report on October 27 summarizing the mission’s work, election environment, activities of political parties, election administration work and legislative changes adopted after the last elections.

“The main group of our observation mission arrived on September 10 and on September 17 the long-term group arrived. We have 15 teams across the country. Each team has a zone area for observation. They are meeting with members of the election administration, political parties involved in the campaign, and local media and they are trying to make an assessment of the electoral preparations and the campaign environment.

On October 11, we published an interim report speaking about the spheres we are looking at, and the purpose of the preliminary statement tomorrow is to conclude the work in terms of observing the entire election period and Election Day.

We will have the opportunity to talk about the election environment, activities of the political parties, work of the election administration and changes to the law that have been made since the last election. Tomorrow we will give the full assessment,” he said.

The Head of the OSCE/ODIHR observation mission said the teams had the opportunity to meet political parties both in Tbilisi and the regions. He also remarked on the role of the media in elections.

“Media has a big role in observing elections. You are here interviewing me and I am thankful, and tomorrow at the press conference, we will be able to talk about the role of the media in elections and what we have observed about the operation of media in Georgia during the election campaign. There will be a full section dedicated to that. We also conducted media monitoring and we have people observing the media and what they say in different programs, watching what they wrote on different websites and we are also looking at what is said in the social media,” he said.

The 2024 parliamentary elections are held on October 26 in Georgia.