Watchdog Denies Political Links
Giorgi Chkheidze, head of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), said that official allegations that the group was an affiliate of the opposition Republican Party was an attempt to discredit GYLA.
MP Pavle Kublashvili from the ruling party said on January 14 that GYLA, which observed the electoral process and critically assessed it, specifically the post-election process, was linked to the Republican Party. On January 8 president-elect Mikheil Saakashvili said: GYLA “everyone knows is affiliated with the Republican Party.”
“Allegations that we have political interests aim at discrediting us, as an independent observer organization, and these allegations are being used as a pretext to sidestep concrete facts and complaints, which we have revealed,” Chkheidze said at a press conference on January 15. “Our organization has been observing elections for 13 years… Observer organizations exist to observe elections, to reveal violations, to inform the public about these violations and use legal methods to challenge them by filing complaints.”
GYLA, which fielded 400 election observers in Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Batumi and Khelvachauri, has filed up to 230 complaints to the election administrations and courts. Most of them, however, GYLA said, had been unfairly and arbitrarily dismissed by the election administrations on procedural grounds.