Georgian Dream has been accused of displaying a map of Georgia excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They have since argued that the regions were outlined in grey, rendering them barely visible to cameras.

The map was part of a presentation given by Parliamentary Speaker Shalva Papuashvili about his party’s deployment of specially appointed delegates to electoral districts throughout Georgia, in an apparent attempt to counter allegations of using nontransparent resources and illegal tactics to pressure voters through their campaign offices. 

[Read more: Georgian Dream accused of using call centres to monitor and pressure voters] 

The presentation included a slide depicting a map of Georgia excluding Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Amid decades-long and lingering territorial disputes, such depictions of Georgia have become particularly sensitive among Georgians, especially after instances where officials and state media in Russia, which recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent in 2008, started using similar graphics to depict Georgia.

The use of such maps was made illegal in 2020, when the Georgian Parliament amended the country’s criminal code to make it an offence to produce, publish, advertise, use, import, transport, export, or sell ‘any electronic or printed map, or any other item, that depicts a violation of Georgia's territorial integrity with the intent to spread misinformation regarding the country's territorial integrity’. Violations are punishable by a fine or up to two years in prison.

The opposition party Unity — National Movement also condemned the press briefing.

‘Today, at the Georgian Dream briefing, we witnessed yet another act of betrayal against Georgia, where the current parliamentary speaker presented a map that does not include Abkhazia and our beloved and vital Samachablo [South Ossetia] as part of Georgia. This is precisely what the Georgian Dream government is attempting to legitimise today,’ said their spokesperson, Levan Sanikidze.

Georgian Dream’s executive secretary, Mamuka Mdinaradze, swiftly dismissed criticism of the map displayed during the briefing, saying that it only aimed at distracting from Papuashvili’s statements.

Mdinaradze claimed that the outlines of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were lighter in colour, and thus did not appear when televised, which he alleged led to ‘misunderstandings about the graphic’.

Publika reported that the outlines of the map were ‘faintly visible’ from some angles, but ‘invisible to the eye’ from others. They compared a screengrab of Imedi’s broadcast of the briefing to a copy of the presentation they received after the briefing from Georgian Dream, which outlined Abkhazia and South Ossetia in a fainter grey colour.