31 Aug, 2021
Greetings,
At today’s briefing, I would like to summarize the pre-election campaign.
Half of the time allocated to the election campaign has already elapsed. During this period, the Georgian Dream has nominated its candidates in all municipalities, developed a realistic election program, and is actively working to convey to the public – despite the global pandemic – the plans and goals that it will implement and achieve through the self-government bodies after winning the elections!
Meetings with the population and thematic groups take place on a daily basis in accordance with COVID-related rules and regulations; problems on the level of each village and each district are registered, and ways to resolve them are found.
At the same time, we can all see that the opposition is practically not engaged in election campaigning – they are not talking about the needs of the region’s residents, and they do not have anything even resembling a program. They offer the population nothing but a campaign of disinformation and loathing.
Moreover, they are not making use of outdoor advertising spaces, including advertising billboards, which serves the sole purpose of enabling them to claim – after their defeat in the elections – that the campaign took place under unequal conditions, and to use the ratio of the use of advertising spaces as an argument to support this claim.
The opposition is not making use of paid airtime to run political advertisements. They only use the free airtime available to electoral subjects, so as to be able to claim, after their inevitable defeat in the elections, that an unequal and noncompetitive environment was created in the run-up to the elections. And this is taking place against the backdrop of the opposition having spent more money than the Georgian Dream during the previous parliamentary elections, despite their defeat.
Opposition parties have not fielded candidates in those municipalities where they would have had even the slightest chance of winning, so as to be able to claim, after their defeat in the elections, that their representatives lost in every village and town due to alleged manipulations.
These political forces have not participated in the staffing of district and precinct commissions in order to be able to claim, after their defeat in the elections, that the staff comprising the commissions were biased.
All these circumstances indicate that the opposition is resigned to their inevitable defeat in the elections and, rather than preparing for the 2 October elections, they are preparing for unrest on the day after the elections.
Our population will most likely witness a campaign of unprecedented disinformation and loathing from the opposition, as the only political tactic of these forces entails sowing panic, manipulating human tragedies, and trying to receive political dividends in this manner.
This is precisely why we are already seeing their attempts to stage serious provocations, which will most likely take even more radical forms in the month remaining before the elections, as rather than trying to persuade our citizens with their election programs and deriving democratic legitimacy from them, their method involves trying to return to power by stirring up hatred and sowing hysteria and disorder.
This is the tactic that these forces have been employing for years, and this is the tactic that leads to their defeat from year to year.
Despite the opposition’s goals and their destructive agenda, we will conduct our election campaign in a calm and business-like environment, talking to the population about specific cases and projects. We will hold the elections in a free and competitive environment, and we will not allow anyone to go against the will of the voters, even on the day after the elections.