GNDEM expresses its deep concern with recent statements made against GNDEM members the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) and the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association (GYLA) in Georgia, undermining their credibility and challenging their observation methodologies. GNDEM stands in solidarity with credible and independent Georgian citizen observers.

On October 26, Georgia held parliamentary elections amidst a challenging pre-election environment as reported by ISFED in their pre-election statement. A number of changes to the legal framework, starting with the adoption of a law targeting civil society, initiated an unprecedented campaign to discredit and intimidate nonpartisan citizen election observers. Additionally, ISFED raised issues related to abuse of state resources by the ruling party, physical violence, disruption of the election campaign, threats, intimidation, attempts to damage party offices, arrests of party members, disinformation and allegations of voter bribery. On election day, both organizations noted a meaningful number of critical incidents related to physical and verbal violence, voter intimidation and tracking as well as alleged vote buying and attempts to violate the secrecy of the vote.

Based on their findings, ISFED announced in their preliminary statement that “the results of the October 26 parliamentary election, regardless of the outcome, cannot be seen as truly reflecting the preferences of Georgian voters.” Furthermore, and in line with the Parallel Vote Tabulation, PVT methodology, ISFED has reiterated that the flawed process during the pre-election phase and on election day impacted the choice of voters and announced that “although ISFED’s PVT results verification is consistent with the results announced by the CEC, the PVT results verification cannot be used as a measure of the validity of the electoral process because fundamental flaws in pre-election and election day processes impacted voters’ ability to express their free choice.”

As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders stated, election observers, including nonpartisan citizen election observers, are human rights defenders who serve to protect civil and political rights of citizens and that “member states are urged to take all necessary steps to establish conditions that allow national and international election observers to effectively do their work, and to protect them from any violence, threats, retaliation, adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of their legitimate exercise of their rights and freedoms.”

GNDEM stands in solidarity with ISFED, GYLA, and all nonpartisan civic actors who face threats to their security for safeguarding the electoral process, ensuring transparency and accountability, and defending the right of citizens to exercise their vote. GNDEM condemns all forms of threats, harassment and violence against nonpartisan citizen election observers.