First International Reaction on Georgia’s Polls

In a joint statement the Presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland congratulate Georgia “on passing its democracy exam by holding free and competitive parliamentary elections.”

“The initial reports confirm that elections in Georgia were conducted generally in accordance with the international norms,” the statement says.

“The Presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland will continue to deepen its intensified dialogue with Georgia and support its efforts towards integration of Georgia to the Euro Atlantic structures.”
 
Slovenian Foreign Minister, Dimitrij Rupel, whose country holds EU’s rotating presidency, said on May 22 that reports from Georgia’s parliamentary elections were “encouraging.”

“The first evaluation of the elections are mostly positive although we still have to wait for the reports [of international observers],” AFP quoted Rupel as saying before an EU-Ukraine troika meeting near Ljubljana. “We all want a stable Georgia and we want things there to improve. It seems [that the situation] was better now than at the presidential elections [in January] and that is an encouraging result," Rupel said.

U.S. Department of State spokesman Tom Casey was quoted by The Associated Press as saying: “We were pleased to see that the elections in general proceeded in a positive manner.” He, however, also added that the United States was still assessing the elections.

The main international election observation mission said on May 22 that “despite efforts to conduct elections in line with standards, a number of problems were identified which made their implementation uneven and incomplete.”

In its conclusion on the January presidential election the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission said that it assessed “compliance of the [January 5 presidential] election process with OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections.”

No judgment of this type was included in the preliminary statement of the international observation mission on the May 21 parliamentary elections.