Levan Ioseliani, the Public Defender for Georgia, gave an interview on November 1 to Palitranews. He explained that his mandate did not allow him to qualify the legitimacy of the election, that he was looking into facts of electoral fraud and violation of the law that were identified by his office before, during and after the day of the election, and that the opposition refused to cooperate with his office. I, nor any other Georgian public defender, have ever assessed the legitimacy of elections. No one of them has ever evaluated the legitimacy of elections because that isn’t the mandate of a Public Defender. We have said this many times. We have made statements about this many times. Their goal was to drag me or my Office in this political discussion… They know that we did observe the elections and they know what we do within the scope of our mandate”. According to him, within the scope of his mandate, his Office has identified 110 media incidents that show signs that the law was violated during the pre-election, election day, and afterwards. He said only one non-governmental organisation had contacted the Ombudsman to inquire about these violations. He said that his Office was criticized by the Opposition because it doesn’t support certain political parties or make “absurd” statements with them. For example, “that 350,000 people were part of Georgian Dream‘s carousel plan”, he said, because it would be logistically difficult to drive around that many people “without anyone knowing”. He also said he doubted the claims that 100,000 people’s IDs were confiscated, because his Office has been asking people for two months to complain if their documents have been taken away. No one has written a complaint. “But it should be evaluated in a broader context, whether [the issue of visible markings] has anything to with the expression of a persons will. Commenting further on the issue, he said: “There were procedural violations, nobody denies that.”Ioseliani also claimed that the opposition parties refuse to provide evidence of intimidation/fraud/bribery/confiscation of IDs, despite his “numerous public and private appeals.” He called on the opposition parties to present any evidence they have that the state is not responding adequately to, promising “to do everything in his power” to transparently investigate these cases. He said that the cases he identified would be included his report on elections. Finally, he addressed the rally announced for November 4, and the demonstrators’ intentions to use tents. He said that it was fully within their rights of expression and called on the MIA to not obstruct them. He also said that the tents were not the ultimate goal of the rallies. This means that having tents isn’t important if they are empty. He called on the protesters to use the tents in order to express their opinions. His interview was also criticized on social media. Giorgi Burjanadze, former Deputy Ombudsman wrote in a post on Facebook: “In reality the Public Defender has power to oversee the constitutionality elections and not knowing that is alleged incompetence. This is the only power that is written directly in the Constitution. The rest is in Organic Law. The fifth Public Defender of Georgia drafted a special report about certain elections. The Public Defender is responsible for the right to vote and its realization. This right is also described in the organic law of the Public defender. The Public Defender has the right, under Article 14 part 1, subsection E, to determine “the constitutionality of norms that regulate referendum and elections as well as elections held or to held according to these norms.”
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