Member of the Political Council of "Georgian Dream", Speaker of the Parliament Shalva Papuashvili responds to the accusations of the opposition about the alleged rigging of the elections, the violation of the secrecy of voting and the alleged pressure on voters. He spoke about this at a briefing held at the party office today.

"I have to appear before you again to expose another disinformation. This is already the third series of the series that the opposition, several millionaire NGOs and their foreign patrons are watching the Georgian people. It is said that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce. Tragically, this history of so-called rigged elections repeated itself exactly 4 years ago, and by the way, yesterday was November 3rd. 4 years ago, on November 3, 2020, that historic gathering took place in the studio of the opposition "Mtavari Arkhi", where they signed a promise that they would not enter the parliament under any circumstances, then they stopped and everyone entered the parliament. Now this is repeated like a farce, the same actors, the same stage director, but they think that the audience is the same, but everyone already understands this farce well and these people themselves are watching it. Now, let's look at the third series of our revelations. I will touch on three issues - the secrecy of the vote, about which one particular NGO raised hysteria, the mobilization of voters and the existing conspiracies regarding the reasons for the high support. First, regarding disinformation and violation of confidentiality, we remind you that 6 elections have been held so far using this method - the method of electronic counters. Since 2021, no one has complained about secrecy in any of the elections, nor has anyone complained about anything related to the so-called ink on the ballots. He had no problem. After only 5 days, since they did not see any other argument, they thought of this as an excuse and thus claim that the confidentiality is violated.

Now let's see what happens in international practice. First - transparent boxes are used in the 2020 Polish parliamentary elections (not electronic and ballots are used), ballots are not even placed in envelopes. With us, the ballot is either placed in an envelope or a frame is placed in an envelope. In Poland, you can see that it is not in the envelope, if you look, you will see that it is also visible who the voter is voting for. That is, what should GYLA say that secrecy is violated in Poland and the parliamentary elections of 2020 should be cancelled?! Let's move on to the 2024 Bulgarian parliamentary elections, here too, there is a transparent box, the ballots are not placed in the envelope, as you can see the party numbers and the voter's choices are visible. That is, what does the Young Lawyers Association, its sponsoring EU member, think that the Bulgarian parliamentary elections should be cancelled? Just two weeks ago, there were parliamentary elections in Lithuania. It is a semi-transparent box, they used to have a transparent box. The ballots are not placed in an envelope, and you can see who the Lithuanian voter has chosen when they are cast.

Yesterday you know that the elections were held in Moldova, which the opposition watched with amazement. We have seen a picture where there is also a semi-transparent box and the ballots are not placed in the envelope. That is, what does the "Association of Young Lawyers" think that the presidential elections in Moldova should be canceled? Is this what the Association of Young Lawyers promises to the Moldovan people? This once again shows how much fraud we are already dealing with on the part of some NGOs, when they can no longer find any argument for the realization of their political goals and are struggling with moss. But the moss, which Georgian people have seen for a long time. This is the problem that non-governmental organizations, especially those that call themselves the so-called monitoring organization and operate with foreign funding, were involved in the election campaign, aimed at achieving a specific election result, were against "Georgian Dream" and now, when this result is not So, they are trying to use their foreign funding to take elections away from Georgian, Moldovan, Bulgarian, Lithuanian and Polish voters. Because that's really what this delusion we're hearing from the "Young Lawyers Association" is all about. This is no longer the problem of one non-governmental organization, it is the problem of those donors who give the possibility of these fraudulent conclusions to such organizations, which directly try to take away the choice of the Georgian people with disinformation. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the donors and they cannot escape this responsibility this time. I want them to pay attention to the fact that democracy is being undermined with their money.

The following misinformation regarding voter mobilization - they went through these topics, they couldn't think of anything, neither Tengo nor "Toptwins" explained, in the end Mr. Khazaradze and the rest of the opposition remained the hope of "TV Pirveli". They discovered that it turns out that the parties are in contact with their own voters, they talk to their own voters, they mobilize their own voters. Among them, this has already taken on a fascist character in the social network. We've seen a former public defender release personal information with context that directly marks people as targets of attack. He distributes lists of our coordinators who were responsible for contacting voters, distributes these lists, names and surnames of these people. In one of the lists, he has deleted personal numbers, it seems that he does not understand that the name and surname are also personal information. Disseminates this information in the context of directly marking them as a target for verbal or physical attack. I will also say here that the former public defender is a representative of a non-governmental organization. It is funded by the EU budget, and of course, when such fascist campaigns are made possible thanks to funding from the EU budget, it is the responsibility of the EU. One of the financiers of this organization is the "European Democracy Fund". To remind you, this is the fund that secretly spends money in Georgia, including political activities and political parties. I don't know how this person has been a public defender for so long, when he doesn't realize that he is committing such a big violation when he releases a person's personal information, in the context that he has been marked as an enemy by the appropriate keyboard verbal lions and some physical abusers against these people.

Now what is happening in reality - we these days, including this famous story, which the entire opposition met with so much joy, because after Tengo and Grigoli, after Toptvins, they had run out of hope and hung up on this story. are busy with party work - know and know your voters ensure they come to the polls. We have repeatedly said that all parties do this, those who have the resources to do so and consider themselves a party. This is an internationally proven method, and we have repeatedly said that IRI or NDI even conducted training on this.

Here are the guidelines: 1. This is NDI's guide to organizing an election campaign. The 350-page guide details how to build lists, voter bases, how to divide them into supporters, opponents, undecideds, how to connect and communicate with them, and why it's all necessary. In this guide, it is said that it is not enough to love the voters if they only love you from home. It doesn't matter how well you do in the polls if voters don't go to the polls. It also said to check if they voted and make sure they come to vote if they haven't already. Directly described is the process as a whole, in detail. All parties in this country have participated in such trainings and seminars where international experience is shared. It describes in detail how the bases should be formed, what information should be in it, more information is recommended than what is in these distributed lists, and then how to communicate with them and convince them to come to the polls, how to verify on election day whether they were at the polls and not. Accordingly, how to make sure that they come to the elections. Also, refer to IRI's guide to organizing a campaign, and here you will find quotes like this - “It's the supporter who votes. Your hard work can be wasted if you don't ensure that your constituents go to the polls." 2. Create your own database of voters, name, phone number, etc. There is a whole list of what should be in this database. 3. A week before the election, contact all supporters and remind them to come to the polls. 4. On the day of the election, ask them and help them to come to the precinct, by transportation and so on. This is the farce we are dealing with in the form of opposition or non-governmental organizations, when they have no argument and look for excuses to adjust their own perception of the world. Their idea of ​​the world, in fact, was formed into a pseudo-religious direction. Party membership or affiliation does not matter. Everyone who acts with this philosophy is a representative of this ideology, "the people". It is impossible in their world that the Georgian people refuse to come to power and now they are facing this psychological problem when they face the real reality. So, this is also a complete fake, disinformation, as if compiling, organizing, and connecting with lists of voters and supporters is something unknown to Georgian practice. In every election, every party that has the resources to do so, and to some extent, is a big party, works like this. This is the main principle of the party's work, and foreign practice shows exactly this. We present international guidelines and manuals among them.

Third, misinformation about high support. Here, too, we have seen, among them, a xenophobic campaign in which Salome Zurabishvili is also involved, NGOs are involved, and the opposition is involved, when they single out certain constituencies and regions in our country, which are particularly densely populated by representatives of ethnic minorities, and in that context they represent high support, as if it is happening manipulating people. This is the usual xenophobic campaign, which is also, once again, carried out by organizations that are financed from abroad. What are we really dealing with and let's look at what is the reality now - you know that there was no majoritarian system in these elections, although the so-called system will be introduced. Institute of Delegate. Every party could assign a specific person to this or that district in its election list and say that this person will be the representative of your district in the next parliament.

"Georgian Dream" appointed delegates in all districts, in all thirty districts, and we had all delegates, among them, most of them are active majoritarians who already have ties to the region, and all delegates were representatives of the region, people with ties to the region, whom the people of the region considered to be their own voice and representative in the parliament. Once again, we had delegates in every district.

Also, we did a number of door-to-door visits where we went to every family with delegates or representatives from our headquarters. Among them, one of the main tasks of door-to-door is precisely to register voters, to see who our voters are, who we can convince to be our voters, etc. The purpose of door to door is also to distribute our information leaflets and we had a separate door to door for this when we distributed leaflets related to achievements and election programme. You know that a large-scale event was held in every region, where we were all represented, and among them, even separately, we, personally, went to the region and had meetings. In total, if we look at the delegates, the registered activities are as follows: 5048 meetings were held only by the delegates, this is the recorded meetings held by 30 delegates in 50 days, which is an average of 100 meetings per day across the country and per delegate, the election campaign, these 50 During the day, 170 meetings were held. We were in every village, we were in every district, we went to almost every family, in order to talk with them, to explain what our election platform is, to convince them to support the "Georgian Dream". What was the opposition doing at that time? - They, no one, not a single party, not a single delegate was named, zero. They didn't have it at all, they didn't tell people that you know what, this person will be your representative in the parliament. They didn't have candidates from the region in the exit lists, which would be the face of the region, where Imerletian, Kakhetian, Acharelian, would consider that this is my vote and representative in the parliament. Among them, they did not have representatives of ethnic groups in the exit lists, they did not have them at all. There was only one party and it is not representative of the region where certain ethnic groups are compactly settled. They did not campaign in the region at all. You would have seen that there were several sunsets in the presence of cameras. In the region, by the way, I don't mean only the region beyond Tbilisi, I mean Tbilisi as well. They didn't have meetings in Tbilisi districts, ask them, you also asked and asked them, in Tbilisi or outside it, if they saw representatives of opposition parties who went from village to village, district to district and met people. They actually had no campaign in the region and basically their campaign was television and foreign support, nothing more. Zero delegates from different districts of Georgia, meanwhile, had visits to USA, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Italy during this election campaign. Instead of coming and talking to people, they went and talked to foreigners. This paid off. You can see that their voters are more foreigners than the population of Georgia and we can see what kind of support they have from outside. If we look at the 10 districts with the highest support, where "Georgian Dream" received the highest support. There are no constituencies here, where only ethnically compactly populated constituencies can be. These are: Ninotsminda, Akhalkalaki, Sachkhere, Bolnisi, Marneuli, Lentekhi, Dmanisi, Kazbegi, Mestia, Tsalka. Out of 64 municipalities and if we take Tbilisi as one municipality, in 60, i.e. 94%, "Georgian Dream" received support higher than 50%, in 30 of them it received support from 60 to 70 percent, and this shows how was distributed. These xenophobic campaigns, which are carried out by the media and "Enjeos", when they are talking about Ninotsminda and Akhalkalaki, where they not only did not have a designated delegate, not a representative of the region, but also did not have a representative from the ethnic group in the lists at all. You know that our acting majoritarian from this district, from Ninotsminda-Akhalkalaki, is Samvel Manukian, who has been representing this region for years, and even now, as a delegate, he was actively involved, he went to every family, every district, talked to everyone, and what do you think, why should Did the representatives of this district vote for Gvaramia or Khazaradze? Do they think that they will see it on TV and have to vote with the TV button? Do these parties even know what is important to these people? So, in general, there is exactly this explanation here. They did not work with the population at all, they did not come to anyone at all. They spoke to the whole of Georgia on TV, including the constituencies densely populated by ethnic groups, they didn't even have a representative on the list to have their voice and perceive someone as their representative in the parliament, and then they wonder why this or that person doesn't have high support. Sachkheri's high support is traditional. As for Bolnisi, you know that our delegate in this case was the mayor of Bolnisi, who has been the mayor of Bolnisi for years, and if you look at the development of Bolnisi, you will understand why Georgian Dream has such high support thanks to his candidacy. Our delegate in Marneuli was Zaur Dargal, who is the current majoritarian and therefore, of course, he has special respect in the region. Lentekhi, Dmanisi, Kazbegi, in relation to all these issues, it is actually very easy to understand why the opposition was catastrophically defeated in Georgia as a whole, why it was catastrophically defeated in those regions that did not even realize that they should be their representatives in the parliament. Those who grew up here on the parquet considered that they should probably be representatives of the regions. I will repeat that in these regions where they are spreading this xenophobic campaign, the turnout was actually the lowest, and even lower than it was in 2020. If they think that the secrecy of voting in Georgia has been violated and should be canceled, then yesterday's presidential elections in Moldova should also be canceled. The parliamentary elections held two weeks ago in Lithuania, the parliamentary elections held in Poland, Bulgaria and these four examples should be canceled, otherwise I will give you a million other examples and observe how the elections in the United States of America are and you will see the violation of secrecy by this standard. Presenting voter mobilization as if it is not a violation but something that is not an international standard of party work is an absolute lie. You see, it took five minutes and two textbook excerpts to expose us to this big farce, including the fascist campaign that some NGOs are now running on social media. Reasons for high support - look, in reality the complex scheme they were talking about is very simple. This scheme is called Democracy and People's Support. If the people don't support you, if you don't go to the people, of course you won't have any chance to have good results there, and secondly, in this election, don't let anyone fool themselves or be complacent, especially in the opposition, this catastrophic defeat for them in this election. It means one thing that the Georgian people gave them the place they deserve, they gave them the place of traitors and stateless people, and they should be in this place according to the verdict of the Georgian people", said Shalva Papuashvili.

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