Georgia will not invite the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) monitoring mission to observe the local self-government elections scheduled for October this year, said Georgia’s Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, APA’s Tbilisi correspondent reports.
He noted that although there are exceptions in practice, the OSCE ODIHR is mainly invited as an observer to parliamentary elections.
“Those who ignored the OSCE/ODIHR’s opinion are now calling on us to invite the mission to observe the municipal elections to be held in October. The local elections will be conducted in a proper and healthy manner. There are certain exceptions, for example, in 2022. That election was related to the topic of parliamentary elections. In exceptional cases, the OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission is invited to observe local self-government elections. However, according to standard practice, the mission is invited to observe parliamentary elections. Therefore, we believe it is not necessary to overload them with local elections. The municipal elections will be held in a proper and healthy manner. The OSCE/ODIHR observed the parliamentary elections and prepared an opinion, but no one showed interest in the report. Now, those same people are calling on us to invite the mission,” the Prime Minister said.
Note that the British Embassy in Georgia has called on the Georgian government to invite the OSCE/ODIHR to observe the municipal elections scheduled for October this year and to implement all the recommendations included in the OSCE/ODIHR’s final report on the 2024 parliamentary elections.
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