Tea Tsulukiani, Vice Speaker of the Parliament, rejected claims of fraud in the October, 26 parliamentary elections by highlighting a gap of 800,000 votes between the winning party and the runner-up.

In comments at a session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, she claimed “fraud of this scale does not exist in nature”, in her rejection of the allegations by the opposition groups that gained seats at the lawmaking body but have refused to enter it.

“One cannot talk about fraud when votes are counted using electronic technology, which, by the way, was introduced in Georgia by Western companies. A Western company, not a Russian one, conducted an audit of the votes and confirmed that fraud was impossible thanks to this technology, and if there was any misconduct, an investigation is underway on eight different cases. So what is the problem? The problem is that the election results are not acceptable…

Since 2022, we have had the impression in Georgia, and I am not the only one saying this, that Georgia must be punished at all costs. And this is while more than 20% of our country is still under Russian occupation, but some still call Georgia pro-Russian and try to exclude it instead of continuing dialogue and providing assistance”, - said the Vice Speaker.