Opposition Fears Ruling Party Controls Election Commissions

A new initiative giving executive officials right to participate in the pre-election campaign, as well as a method of composition of lower level election commissions, has triggered opposition’s concerns on the eve of local self-governance elections scheduled in Georgia for this autumn.

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has almost completed composition of 72 election districts with 5 members each on March 7. According to the law member of the election commissions should be a person with no affiliation to any political party, who has a relevant certificate proving his skills in election administration. The CEC claims that new members of the district commission were selected through open competition out of 717 candidates.

But at a news conference on March 15 the MPs from opposition Conservative party questioned the impartiality of the CEC in the process of selection of the new members and accused the CEC of lobbying those candidates with alleged links to ruling National Movement party.

Zviad Dzidziguri, MP from the Samtredia single-mandate constituency, brought an example of composition of the Samtredia election district. He said that prior to announcement of results of the competition in Samtredia the Conservative Party obtained a list of those persons who were thought to become new members of the election commission in that district. MP Dzidziguri said that the list was sent to number of non-governmental organization, including the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. MP Dzidziguri said that list of names obtained by the party coincided with those who won the competition and became members of the Samtredia district commission. He said that all of them are affiliated with the National Movement party. 

“The members of the district commissions were actually appointed in the National Movement’s office, simply the CEC formalized it,” MP Kakha Kukava of the Conservative Party told Civil Georgia on March 16.
 
Newly appointed Chairman of the Central Election Commission Guram Chalagashvili, who recently visited France to get acquainted with the local election system there, has not yet commented on these accusations.
 
Tamar Zhvania of the election watchdog organization International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) also questioned the process of selection new members of the election commissions. She said that it was quite impossible to conduct balanced selection of new members out of 717 applicants within only 15 days.  
 
“The criteria of selection of the commission members were also quite obscure. It is unclear exactly based on which criteria new members were selected. We asked this question to the CEC officials but they failed to explain,” Tamar Zhvania told Civil Georgia on March 16.

She also said that selection process itself was not transparent. “We observed each stage of composition of the district election commissions and I can say that the process was completely non-transparent,” Tamar Zhvania said.
 
According to the Central Election Commission, the first sessions of the district election commissions will be held on March 20 to specify the borders of polling stations and to launch checking of voter lists.
 
‘Controversial’ Initiative
 
Georgian media reported recently, that Vice Speaker of the Parliament Mikheil Machavariani has proposed amendment to the election code, under which the President and the cabinet members will have the right to participate in a political party’s election campaign.
 
The current election legislation prohibits the President (Mikheil Saakashvili is the chairman of the National Movement party) and other officials from the executive government to participate in an election campaigning.
 
Chairman of the Committee for Regional Policy and Self-Governance Issues, MP Pavle Kublashvili confirmed on March 16 that such initiative really exists, however noted that proposal does not imply the President and even if approved the latter will still have no right to participate in the election campaigning. 
 
“This does not regard to the President. This initiative will imply only to those members of the government who are not ‘power ministers’ [Defense and Interior Ministers],” MP Kote Kublashvili told Civil Georgia on March 16. 
 
He said that this amendment to the election code, which will apparently be adopted at the spring session, will be submitted to the Parliament for consideration on March 20.   
 
MP Kublashvili said that according to the initiative will prohibit use of state funds by the members of the executive government in election campaigning. 
 
The opposition has already described the initiative as highly controversial, which is an attempt to legalize the already existing practice when the governmental officials, including the President were actively participating in the election campaigning of the ruling party.