The authorities will announce about the plan to set up a group, which will draft a new election code, next week, a senior lawmaker from the ruling party, Pavle Kublashvili, told Civil.Ge on December 11.

“The exact format of the group has yet to be defined; it won’t be a closed group, it will be open for both the parliamentary and non-parliamentary political forces, as well as for all other interested organizations,” MP Kublashvili, who chairs the parliamentary committee for legal issues, said.

He said that Davit Bakradze, the Parliamentary Chairman, will make an announcement on the matter next week when he returns back from his visit to the United States. Bakradze told an audience in the National Democratic Institute in Washington on December 10 that the reform of the election code was planned.

MP Kublashvili also said that considerations about reforming of the election code started in summer, but the process was hampered by the August war.

The opposition parties – those not having representation in the parliament – are calling for the early elections.

Speaking in the public TV’s new weekly political program, Accents, Davit Usupashvili, a leader of the opposition Republican Party, which has just recently formed an alliance with the New Rights Party, said that he was sure that early parliamentary elections will be called next year. He also said that meanwhile reform of the election code was needed to secure genuinely fair polls. Usupashvili also said that the situation was now ripe, wherein the authorities would agree to start reforming the election code.