In fact, we had the “Russian elections”. This was not the usual fraud that we see in elections – you would not find the police during elections, - Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili stated in her speech to the European Parliament.
As the President explained, she wanted to talk to the Minister of Internal Affairs about the cases of violence that occurred during the elections, but she could not get in touch with him.
“In fact, we had the “Russian elections”. These are elections that were massively rigged, carried out at a very high, sophisticated level. This was not the usual fraud that we see in elections.
Changes to the Electoral Code were planned, which began much earlier. Full control was transferred to the CEC. Those people who were appointed by the CEC were not appointed in accordance with the rules that the European Union proposed, but were appointed by the government. Electronic voting was developed without control. There was talk that pensions of European older citizens had been stolen, and there were also issues of "call centers" - the issue of 3,500 "call centers". Intimidation, use of administrative resources, Russian-style propaganda, there were posters where on one side there were destroyed churches and theaters of Ukraine, and on the other side, an image of a prosperous Georgia. This shocked the Georgian society so much that they were then dismantled. This is not an integral part of the Georgian character, it showed Russian traces. There were also facts: “The opposition wants to overthrow the government”, “They should be abolished after the elections”, “Opposition parties should be banned after the elections”, “The leaders should be arrested”. A large amount of “black money” was used. 600 million GEL was spent during the October elections. You would not find the police during the elections. For example, I saw violence taking place in various polling stations. I called the Minister of Internal Affairs and I could not reach him either by mobile phone or through the government network. I could not contact his deputies, they did not call me back either.
Two principles were violated during the elections. This is enough to show that any result would have been different. A million members of the diaspora are in Strasbourg. Strasbourg is a very good example, no polling station was opened here, there are many Georgians in Strasbourg. The entire diaspora was mobilized, they knew that the elections were the choice between the path to Russia or Europe.
Also, there was a question of trust in terms of confidentiality - electronic systems were used, party cameras were watching election machines. There was a lawsuit against all of this in the Constitutional Court. We hoped that some judges would understand and realize that this was the way out of the crisis. The results were falsified, elections should have been called constitutionally. There was another request from a group of citizens to the Strasbourg Court, where it was stated that we want to use all legal means to make a political decision on this deep crisis,” the President noted.
