The Coalition for Change and Unity-UNM, both opposition forces that passed the five percent threshold in the October 26 elections, announced that they will officially ask the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) to renounce their MP mandates. The leaders of both parties announced the decision in separate special briefings on November 12.
“This Parliament is illegitimate, so we consider participation in this Parliament as complicity in an illegitimate Parliament and illegitimate actions,” announced Nika Gvaramia, one of the leaders of the Coalition for Change. He said the coalition had 82 MP candidates on its list, and all of them “refuse any form of collaboration with a regime that steals elections and expresses the interests of the Russian Federation in our homeland”. Each person on the party list then publicly signed a letter requesting CEC to renounce his/her candidacy and requesting the CEC not register them as MPs.
“Today we officially want each of us who was on the parliamentary list of Unity-UNM to write individual letters to the CEC so that no candidate representing Unity-UNM will be overlooked in the registration,” announced Tinatin Bokuchava, chair of UNM. She stressed that it was the “free will” of Unity-UNM members to renounce the mandates they had received “as a result of elections in which there was total manipulation.” Bokuchava also clarified that since the MP candidates renounce their mandates, the CEC has no right to send documents to the Parliament recognizing their rights as MP credentials.
The two coalitions, along with the Strong Georgia, had declared days after the official results that they would not enter Parliament, although today’s statements by the Coalition for Change and Unity-UNM represent an official intended renunciation of MP mandates, as they have signed the relevant documents to be sent to the CEC.
Two other opposition forces – Strong Georgia coalition and Gakharia-For Georgia – which also passed the five percent threshold and which also consider the elections rigged and the parliament illegitimate, have not yet officially declared that they will not enter the Parliament.
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