The only motivation for restricting the right to vote for emigrants is to further consolidate the power of the Georgian Dream, one of the leaders of the United National Movement, Ana Tsitlidze, told journalists.

According to her, the Georgian Dream is restricting the constitutional right of Georgian citizens to participate in their own country’s elections, which is “unequivocally an undemocratic step.”

“The regime is doing two very important things now. First, it is depriving emigrants of the right to vote, which means that it is restricting the constitutional right of hundreds of thousands of Georgian citizens to participate in their own country’s elections, which is unequivocally an undemocratic step. This has only one goal and basis, its goal is for the Georgian Dream to restrict emigrants who do not support the regime as much as possible. Since 2012, the Georgian Dream has not won a single election among emigrants. Georgian Dream also knows that unlike the domestic situation, where it has all the leverage and can rig elections as it pleases, it is virtually impossible to rig elections abroad. This is precisely why it lost at every polling station in the last elections and before. Therefore, the only motivation for restricting voting for emigrants is to further strengthen the power of the Georgian Dream,” Tsitlidze said.

Along with the ban on voting abroad in the parliamentary elections, she also spoke about other planned changes to the Election Code, which are related to the organization of elections and the activities of the commissions.

According to Ana Tsitlidze, the goal of this change is for the government to have full control over the Election Code.

“When the elections have actually been canceled and all our international partners say that there are no elections in this country, when the regime has usurped all state structures and fully controls the election administration, even under these conditions it is afraid and is tightening the Election Code even more. Therefore, the goal of this change on the part of the regime is complete consolidation in order to have total control over the election processes,” Tsitlidze said.