Leader of the opposition Labor party Shalva Natelashvili met with Ambassador Michael Wygant, who chairs election observation mission of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) on March 4.
Shalva Natelashvili urged that the OSCE to refuse to monitor the March 28 parliamentary elections. Natelashvili, as well as other opposition parties protests against the political imbalance in the election administrations in favor of the authorities.
“If the government has five, six, seven, eight representatives in the Central Election Commission, there will be no sense in international monitoring,” Natelashvili said.
He added that with the majority of seats in the commissions authorities will be in a position to manipulate election results.
The government proposed earlier that the President would withdraw its two representatives from the precinct and district election commissions in order to secure balance in the election administrations; however the government refuses to do same in the 15-member Central Election Commission, where the authorities have 8 representatives.