On 26 September 2021, the We Are the Real CEC Facebook page posted a photograph on social networks. According to this photograph, the CEC chairperson issued a decree on 8 September 2021 to instruct the Public Relations Department of the CEC to invite the head of Syria’s Central Election Department together with two department members.

See the photograph.

No such decree can be found on the CEC website. In addition, the list of international observation missions also does not include information about the observation mission from the Syrian Arab Republic.

FactCheck reached out to the CEC to verify the authenticity of the aforementioned decree. According to the CEC, there is no such decree and, therefore, the photograph is fabricated. In addition, the CEC responded to that photograph on its own Facebook page and declared that the photograph is fake.

Of note is that the aforementioned publication was co-ordinately shared in different political groups of supporters of both the Georgian Dream and the opposition by one and the same Facebook users (link 1, link 2, link 3 and link 4). For instance, Facebook users Besika Dolidze and Marina Teqturmanidze reposted this publication in groups supporting the Georgian Dream and the opposition.

In addition, Facebook user Marina Teqturmanidze also shared a publication of the Simartlis Droa Facebook page on her own Facebook account. This page mostly reposts publications intended to smear those critical of government groups, including election observation organisations.

See the photograph.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article was produced as part of Facebook’s Fact-checking Programme. Given the rating, Facebook may impose different restrictions – click here for full information. For information on issuing a correction or to dispute a rating, please see here.