Ex-PM Gakharia slams municipal elections

Georgia’s former prime minister under the Georgian Dream (GD) leadership, Giorgi Gakharia, has slammed recent municipal elections in Georgia and stated that the race was far from being fair.

“These elections were neither free, nor fair. We need to seriously think about the use of money and abuse of administrative resources in the elections. Political neutrality of the public sector has to be guaranteed. Otherwise, voting risks becoming a meaningless show,” Gakharia said.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>These elections were neither free, nor fair. We need to seriously think about the use of money and abuse of administrative resources in the elections. Political neutrality of public sector has to be guaranteed. Otherwise, voting risks becoming a meaningless show.<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Gvote2021?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Gvote2021</a></p>&mdash; Giorgi Gakharia (@GakhariaGiorgi) <a href=”https://twitter.com/GakhariaGiorgi/status/1454858406515314695?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>October 31, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

The party candidates have lost all mayoral races in the elections.

 

However, the party itself garnered 7.79 per cent of the vote in the proportional part of the race and came second after the Georgian Dream ruling party and the United National Movement opposition.

 

Gakharia resigned as the PM and left the GD in February 2021 due to controversies with the ruling party leadership and founded the For Georgia party in May 2021.

 

He has been frequently described as a ‘traitor’ by the ruling party and government officials.