Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on European Integration, Levan Makhashvili, addressed the OSCE Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions.

“New technologies and social media have transformed our electoral landscape indeed, presenting both opportunities for democratic progress as well as challenges to our electoral integrity.

In Georgia, for the first time in our history, we deployed smartmatic electronic machines for voter registration, voting, counting and protocol summaries covering over 90% of our voters. This bold initiative has significantly reduced human error and virtually eliminated any serious electoral irregularity, ultimately strengthening the public trust in our electoral system. And those of you who attended the elections know it well. So, we should not be afraid of new technologies. However, technology’s power to enhance trusts comes with the risk when misused by humans themselves.

In 2024, for example, Georgia witnessed how coordinated textbook campaigns of disinformation and lies, driven by, unfortunately, opposition groups and affiliated foreign actors, can be used without any single fact to discredit elections and to destabilize political processes.

Therefore, to ensure that the new technologies and media tools contribute positively to the resilience of democratic process and reinforce electoral integrity, it is essential that they be guided by unwavering standards of accountability and transparency.

And, Georgia will be working on both aspects this spring plenary session to better regulate the policy and to better enforce the practice on these issues in public and media fields. And we will be more than glad to cooperate with the dedicated OSCE PA members to explore your best experiences in this regard.

I also want to respond to the statement of Committee Rapporteur Carina Ödebrink’s, who said that “in Georgia, we have seen political repression increase drastically following last year’s election”,

Until using the wording of political repression, let us kindly please have in mind that these are 29 persons arrested on criminal charges for throwing Molotov cocktails to the policemen and attacking state institutions with video evidence on each and every individual. Georgian authorities would be more than glad, Madam Odebrink, to cooperate with you and your team to ensure this video evidence while working on your report”, - said Levan Makhashvili.