Three Georgian election monitoring groups said that although 4-month long pre-election period in the lead up to the October 8 vote was “not entirely free of cases of violence”, in overall it was characterized by a pluralistic media, law level of political harassment and use of administrative resources, and political parties were able to run a campaign in a competitive environment.
International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy; Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and Transparency International Georgia released on the eve of the parliamentary elections a joint assessment of pre-election environment in the country.
“Even though the pre-election process was not entirely free of cases of violence, vote-buying, alleged political intimidation and campaigning by unauthorized persons, there is no basis for claiming that these violations substantially influenced the independent formation of the will of the voters,” the monitoring groups said.
They said that “largely violence-free pre-election process was seriously damaged” by three violent incidents that took place within a week before the election day – explosion in the center of Tbilisi that hit opposition UNM party MP Givi Targamadze’s car on October 4; shooting and wounding two men at an outdoor campaign meeting of a majoritarian MP candidate in the town of Gori, ex-defense minister Irakli Okruashvili, on October 2, and assault on three activists of the ruling GDDG party were assaulted in the village of Didinedzi in the Zugdidi municipality on October 1.
“As elections were drawing near, cases of dissemination of illegally recorded personal phone conversations of political party representatives became more frequent. This provides enough ground to suspect that the purpose of dissemination of these recordings was to shape public opinion during the pre-election period through unacceptable methods,” the monitoring groups said.
“Even though investigations have been launched on these cases, public trust towards the efficiency of law enforcement authorities remains low, due to the frequency of such crimes and the dragged out nature of their investigation.”
The election monitoring groups said that compared to previous years, there have been more cases of campaigning by unauthorized persons, and political parties and candidates “attempting to entice voters with monetary and material goods and services.”
“Unfortunately, the country’s judiciary has failed to take effective measures against these types of violations,”
Monitoring groups said that the election administration “is ready to conduct the elections in an organized manner”, but also noted that the process of appointing members of precinct election commissions “proved to be a challenge” after political impartiality of certified election official were called into doubt in a number of electoral districts.
Monitoring organizations criticized how the election administration was reviewing complaints.
“An overwhelming majority of complaints submitted to the Central Election Commission (CEC) has not been satisfied. We believe that the election administration employed a narrow definition of the law when reviewing complaints, which led to an inefficient use of existing legal sanctions on election violations. This practice has given rise to suspicions that the election administration was deliberately avoiding responsibility of imposing sanctions on political parties for election violations,” the election monitoring groups said.
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)