Georgian Parliament Speaker says ISFED funding used to destabilise country, disrupt elections

Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili on Friday said the NGO International Society for Fair Elections And Democracy was a fraudulent organisation that had falsified the results of the parallel vote counting during the 2020 parliamentary elections, in reference to the ISFED presenting incorrect data of the parallel vote tabulation of the parliamentary elections in 2020 that had been used by the domestic opposition parties for several weeks “as evidence that the elections were rigged”.

In his remarks, Papuashvili noted that ISFED, along with USAID, deceived the Georgian public in both the 2020 and 2024 elections to manipulate the electoral process and overthrow the Government.

“ISFED is a fraudulent [non-governmental] organisation that first falsified the results of the parallel vote counting [during the 2020 parliamentary elections] and spread fake results together with its donor USAID, which the current United States administration called a criminal. They hid the real results [of the elections] and the Georgian people were deceived by both the American and Georgian employees of ISFED and USAID in order to somehow subvert the Government and the [parliamentary] elections”, the Speaker said.

“In 2024, they refrained from publishing the parallel vote counting results, and as I have stated, we have credible information that their donor instructed them not to disclose the results. ISFED should clarify how they made this decision and whether their donors were involved or pressured them to withhold the results”, he continued.
Regarding the overall situation, he has noted that this proves once again that ISFED is a fraudulent organisation, which has already lost American funding and is now financed by Brussels.
“When you give such an organisation European taxpayers' money, of course, this is money that is used to destabilise another country and overturn elections”, he concluded.