Spokesperson Maia Panjikidze announced that Georgian Dream will adhere to the code of conduct for political parties and accept the election result. (IPN.)

TBILISI, DFWatch – The largest opposition bloc in Georgia has decided to join the code of conduct for political parties.

The rules were the brainchild of the campaign This Affects You Too, and the 17-point document outlines rules of conduct for political parties during election time. The government, however, announced this as its own idea and prepared a shorter 4-point text.

The Georgian Dream coalition refused to sign the text suggested by the ruling party, because coalition cooperated with This Affects You Too and supported their 17-point document.

«As the idea belonged to This Affects You Too, Georgian Dream considered that we should have signed the text which we already were familiar with and that NGOs could monitor,” Maia Panjikidze, spokesperson for the coalition said a regular briefing on Monday.

Georgian Dream at first refused to sign the ruling party’s document, but kept stating that they would sign the text suggested by NGOs.

But the government accused Georgian Dream of refusing to sign because they wanted to stir tension. Signing this document means that political parties should recognize the results of the election and not appeal it. This was unacceptable to Georgian Dream.

Later, the National Movement added the 17-point text proposed by This Affects You Too to their own text.

But on August 18, the campaign added one more point to the declaration, according to which signatories promise to recognize the results which will be summed by procedures defined by law and which will be considered legitimate by observing organizations having trustworthy recommendation.

Maia Panjikidze says that this option is fully acceptable to them, so they decided to sign the declaration.