The opposition-minded Mtavari Arkhi says they will sue French research and consulting company Ipsos for its recent polls, ahead of Georgia’s municipal election run-offs tomorrow, which were commissioned by the TV channel and released earlier this week.

The company head, former official under the United National Movement (UNM) government, Nika Gvaramia, says that the channel has been accused of spreading fake figures of the polls by the ruling Georgian Dream party members, as the poll figures released by Mtavari Arkhi for the UNM  Zugdidi mayoral candidate Anzor Melia differed from that one released on the official webpage of Ipsos. 

According to the figures releases by Mtavari Arkhi, Melia received 54.7 percent of the vote and was expected to come first in the second round of the elections on Saturday, while the Ipsos official webpage said that Melia received 49 percent of the vote and will come second in the race, after the ruling Georgian Dream candidate. 

Gvaramia says that Ipsos has made a ‘technical mistake’ (which they were aware of) in terms of Melia’s votes and the company had no right to place information on their official webpage without a beforehand communication with Mtavari Arkhi. 

The channel believes that by the ‘extremely suspicious action’ Ipsos has discredited itself and its reputation and ‘it will never be a reliable partner for us.’

Gvaramia said that Ipsos will not conduct run-off exit polls for the channel, noting that ‘unfortunately, we understand that the step has been made to disrupt the possibility for our exit polls which would play as a prevention mechanism against rigging the run-offs.”