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This concerns you!

February 17, 2012

New electoral legislation creates non-democratic electoral environment, is unconstitutional and restricts fundamental human rights and freedoms! It concerns every individual and organization and it must be changed.

Particularly, it:

Restricts freedom of expression, property rights and political activity;

Imposes severe and unfair responsibility on the voters;
Grants indefinite and unconstitutional authorities to the main controller of the financing of political parties – Control Chamber of Georgia;
Creates more unequal electoral environment for political parties.

Restrictions Imposed on Legal Entities

“Article 26¹
Restrictions determined by this article also apply to:

Legal entity which is directly or indirectly connected to the political party, is under the control of a political party or has declared political goals and objectives;

Legal entity which calls on the voter to support or restrain from supporting a political party through a representative or some other individual;

Restriction of Freedom of Expression and Property Rights

Expressing Political Sympathy/Antipathy May Limit Your Income Source

Example 1: If you work for an NGO and the representative of your organization expresses his/her position that he/she does not like some political figure/group and thinks that they cannot bring good for the state, the restrictions set for the political party may apply to your organization and funding from the donors might be ceased since the law prohibits the political parties to receive grants.

Example 2: You are an owner of a pharmaceutical company and you publicly state that you support certain political party. This statement gives sufficient grounds to restrict this company to receive credits or income above 60 thousand GEL and etc…

Restrictions Imposed on Physical Persons

Criminal Code

“Article 164¹. Bribing Voter

Offering, promising, transferring or rendering money, securities (including financial instrument), other property, property rights, services and other privileges or requesting or receiving them with preliminary understanding or signing deceitful or hypocritical or other agreement with political aims in order to bypass the restrictions set by law is punished by a maximum of three years imprisonment or a fine.

You might be imprisoned for three years for receiving help from the political party or politically active individual or even for asking for it.

Example 1: Representative of ruling party visited your friend’s mother and suggested to write a letter of request to cover the costs of her surgery to the Social Service of City Hall and the ruling party. Writing such a request may become grounds for the arrest of your friend’s mother for up until three years.

Example 2: Majority deputy of your region visited your neighborhood and gave out presents. You might get arrested for three years because of this.

Threats for Political Parties and Electoral Contestants

Article 27

7. If the income of physical persons who contribute donations derives from one source (physical or legal entities or persons related to them) in total or in part, then the total number of donations made throughout a year for one electoral contestant must not exceed 500 000 GEL. Besides, total number of the donations made by each must not exceed 60 000 GEL.”

It is impossible for the political party to control whether or not the drawn funds are connected to one source of income. It becomes particularly hard if we examine this article along with paragraph 2 of article 27¹ which obliges political party to ascertain the legality of the donation in three days after receiving it.

According to this formulation, when the political party receives donation, in three days it has to ascertain:

Where the donator works;
How many employees the donator has;
Has any of them transferred money to this party during that year;
Whether the total number of these donations exceeds 500 000 GEL.

Article 34²

If the political party receives or hides the financial or material donations prohibited by law these donations will be transferred to the state budget and the party will be fined by the tenth amount of the received financial or material donation.

If the physical person transfers i.e. 40 000 – 40 000 GEL to several political parties, only the first donation will be legitimate. Obviously, the political parties cannot have information that their donator financially assisted another party. So each party receiving the donation except for the first one in the row will be fined by 400 000 GEL.

Besides, if this action is reiterated the electoral contestant might be eliminated from the elections:

Article 34²

7. If this provision is violated more than once or legal request of Control Chamber of Georgia is violated deliberately or if the violation caused significant damage, Central Commission of Georgia is authorized to cease the electoral registration for the electoral contestant on the basis of the request of Control Chamber if the violation implies an action occurred a year before the elections.

This provision has a hidden message. The electoral registration of political parties lasts no longer than fifty days before the elections. If the registration is stopped and political party appeals against this decision it will have to go through all court instances. Considering the terms established for judicial proceedings, the elections might be over when the party restores its registration.

Sequestration

Article 34²
Control Chamber of Georgia sequestrates property of a political party, physical person or legal entity (including the bank accounts). This decision can be appealed to the court along with the regulation concerning the violation. Appealing does not stop the operation of sequestration.”

Call to support certain political party might become grounds for sequestration of you or your company.

Example 1: If you are a businessman and support certain political party, Control Chamber might consider that you are “connected to the party” and sequestrate your property without applying to the court.

Example 2: If you do not like certain political group and call on others not to vote for them, Control Chamber may sequestrate your property.

Control Chamber sequestrates property of a political party, physical person or legal entity. Before this law was adopted the possibility and procedures of sequestration were envisaged by the Tax Code, Criminal Procedural Code and Georgian Law on Enforcement Proceedings.

Let us see what Criminal Procedural Code of Georgia states:

Article 3564 of Civil Code:

“If there is information that the property under the ownership of the racket, racketeer, member group of thieves-in-law, human trafficker, accomplice in the dissemination of drugs, convict envisaged by the paragraph C of part three of article 194, his/her family member, close relative or person related to the racketeer, government official, member of group of thieves-in-law, human trafficker, accomplice in the dissemination of drugs or convict envisaged by paragraph C of part 3 of article 194 gets hidden, spent or alienated otherwise, the prosecutor is obliged to address the court with a request to sequestrate this property including the bank accounts.”

Article 35610 sets the same regulation for “implementation of prohibited economic activity in the occupied territories.”

Thus, Georgian legislation authorizes court to sequestrate property of member of the racket, human trafficker, accomplice in the dissemination of drugs and an occupant and thus enables these individuals to protect their interests at least formally. However, according to Law on Political Unions of Citizens, the political party or individual who finances party by violating law are imposed harder conditions than the racketeer, human trafficker, accomplice in the dissemination of drugs or an occupant.

Georgian Law on Political Unions of Citizens offers one more novelty. According to Georgian legislation up until now it was possible to sequestrate the part of the property or bank account of an individual the obligation of payment of which rested upon this individual. The cancellation of sequestration occurred automatically after the payment was made or other kind of liability was fulfilled. However, according to Georgian Law on Political Unions of Citizens now the Control Chamber can sequestrate the entire property and bank accounts of physical persons and legal entities. The law does not determine for how long the Control Chamber can sequestrate the property or what kind of condition the individual or political party has to meet in order for the Financial Monitoring Service to cancel the sequestration. Virtually, it is just one government official who is authorized to individually and without setting the term determine the fate of one of the most significant sphere of lives of physical persons and legal entities – finances.

According to our consideration, the utmost goal of existing provisions is not their enforcement which will reveal its absurdity more but intimidation of public with vague formulations and wide interpretation. Particularly, the drive of the law is: think well before you say or act or you might get in trouble and get arrested!

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