Parliament Committees Condemn Russia Election Fraud, Arrest of Protesters

Georgian parliamentary committees for foreign affairs and diaspora issues adopted a joint statement expressing concern over December 4 elections in Russia and condemning arrests of protesters.

"Public outcry against the widespread fraud aligned with the very concept of the so-called ‘managed democracy’ demonstrates that the Russian government does not see the futility of attempts to reverse course of history," the two parliamentary committees said;

The statement, which notes that the large-scale protest rallies in Russia on December 10 came twenty years after a formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, calls on the international community "to continue exerting diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation, in order to ensure fundamental rights and freedoms of its citizens."

The Georgian parliamentary committees also said that they "support demands for democratization of the Russian Federation and believe that Russia’s democratic transformation will improve Moscow’s relations with all of its neighbours and that those relations will be based on principles of equality and mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity."

President Saakashvili said on December 10, that post-election developments in Russia was “the beginning of a great process”, which would lead to putting an end of “the injustice system” in Russia.