Russian Foreign Ministry claims violations in Georgian election campaign

The Georgian authorities are actively using administrative resources and are allowing other violations in the election campaign ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for October, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

"I will not make unfounded statements. This is quite clearly reflected in the findings of the mission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, which expressed concern, as they put it, with suspicious decisions on updating the national electoral legislation," RIA Novosti reports him as saying.

The diplomat noted that these innovations are applied very selectively.

Earlier, the Inter-Commissional Working Group of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation for International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy sent a letter to the Georgian Central Electoral Commission to register members of the House Maxim Grigoriev and Sergey Markov as observers at the parliamentary elections. However, the CEC of Georgia refused to register them due to the absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich  explained this decision by saying that by refusing to register the two Russians as election observers in Georgia, the Tbilisi authorities "apparently have their own understanding of international norms."

Elections to the 150-seat parliament of Georgia are scheduled for October 1.