Page 11 - GEORptOct21

Tbilisi mayor Kaladze to seek reelection
agreement proposed by European Council President Charles Michel.
Meanwhile, Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, a member of Georgia's ruling Georgian Dream party, will run for reelection in October, he announced on July 20. Kaladze is one of the most favourably viewed public figures in Georgia, and the most-liked Georgian Dream leader, according to the latest IRI-commissioned public opinion poll, from April.
2.7 Polls & Sociology
New poll for Georgia local elections gives GD 36%, UNM 27%
Armenia, Georgia ranked as ‘Free’ countries in Freedom on the Net report, Azerbaijan and Turkey as ‘Not Free’
The ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party is expected to receive 36% of the vote while the largest opposition party United National Movement (UNM) is likely to get 27% of the vote in the upcoming municipal elections nationwide, according to an Edison Research poll.
Per Edison Research’s survey the results for political parties nationwide are as followed: Georgian Dream - 36%; United National Movement - 27%; For Georgia (former PM Giorgi Gakharia) - 11%; Labour Party - 4%; Lelo - 4%; Girchi - More Freedom - 4%; and other parties at 2% or less.
For Tbilisi, incumbent Kakha Kaladze (GD) is projected to receive 43% of the vote, against 30% for Nika Melia (the united opposition’s joint candidate) and Gakharia’s 12%.
The mayoral candidate must receive more than 50% of votes in the local self-government elections while the majoritarian candidate must obtain over 40% of votes to gain the victory in the first round.
Edison Research’s survey reports that 12% of GD voters in the 2020 parliamentary elections are now supporters of the For Georgia political party which was established by Gakharia soon after his resignation in February.
Freedom House has ranked Armenia as a “free” country in its Freedom on the Net 2021: The Crisis of Social Media report. Armenia’s neighbour Georgia is also a “free” country, while Azerbaijan and Turkey are ranked as “not free” in the edition of the annual assessment. Armenia’s southern neighbour Iran is “partly free.”
According to the report, “Internet freedom in Armenia declined significantly as a result of restrictions on the free flow of information the government adopted during the armed conflict between ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“The implementation of martial law in late September 2020 placed broad restrictions on the media’s ability to report on the fighting, including by banning speech deemed to endanger national security, permitting authorities to demand content removal, and mandating fines for noncompliance. A number of Turkish and Azerbaijani websites with .az and .tr domains were inaccessible for several weeks. Users also reported problems accessing TikTok,” Freedom House said.
Prominent news sites also faced technical attacks, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, leaving many of them temporarily inaccessible during the conflict. In a positive move, a measure that had required telecommunications companies to provide authorities with subscriber metadata in order to facilitate contact tracing, adopted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was lifted in September 2020 alongside a virus-related state of emergency.
The report found that global internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year. The environment for human rights online deteriorated in 30 countries this year, while only 18 countries registered net gains. The largest decline occurred
11 GEORGIA Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com