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Violator Election Administration Members Were Re-Elected in Commissions

October 17, 2013
 
Keti Labadze, Adjara

People, dismissed from the election commissions after the results from November 3, 2008 Adjara Supreme Council Election were annulled, were re-re-employed in the Khelvachauri and Batumi District Election Commissions. For example, Ilia Tskhadadze was selected by the CEC as a DEC member. In 2008, he was fired from the position of the DEC Chairman after the election results were annulled in Khelvachauri.

Current DEC Chairman Omar Varshanidze does not see anything illicit in selecting Ilia Tskhadadze to be commission member. He said his predecessor is implementing his duties perfectly. “As for other allegations, he does not care about it.” He also spoke about the people, who during the November 3, 2008 elections were commission chairmen, deputy chairmen or secretaries in the precincts and elections results were annulled there due to blatant violations. 

“13 commission members individually elected each commission member; some of them gave preference to the experience, others gave chance to inexperienced people. In 2008, only election results were annulled, nobody was held responsible for that; there is no document to prove that any of them were prohibited to become member of election administration in future. According to my information, they did not even receive any rebuke. In general, we do not have any guarantees; we monitor their activities everyday; if any of them breach the law, we will take relevant measures,” the chairman of Khelvachauri DEC clarified. Batumi DEC chairman Kakhaber Jayani also shares his opinion: “As for the annulled election results from 2008, only several precincts received disciplinary remarks. As a result of their faulty activities, the results were annulled in the entire district. I do not know those concrete polling stations, where blatant violations were observed; I do not know which commission members were rebuked. Moreover, five years have passed and all similar procedures are annulled within a year.”

He said they followed the recommendations of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and did not accept the applicant in the Batumi DEC, who had received official warning. “There were people in the Batumi DEC, who had received warnings. GYLA recommended us not to select them if any political party nominated them. We had to recommend the precinct election commissions not to select them as commission members. We had the list of those people and none of them were elected.”

During November 3, 2008 Elections of Adjara Supreme Council there were 64 PECs and 832 election administration members in Khelvachauri DEC # 83. During the repeated elections, they did not appear in the commissions. Based on November 4, 2009 resolution # 93 of the Adjara Election Commission, both elections were to be held with the newly staffed PECs.

Nothing is mentioned about the responsibility of the commission members in the November 5, 2008 session protocol. Conclusion of the legal commission, provided to the AEC by Pridon Batnidze, head of the Legal Commission, reads that polling process was carried out through violation in the DEC # 83. “Significant violations were observed in the PECs # 35, #13, #64, #11, #1, #59, 9 and #38. People voted instead other people; under-age citizens took part in the polls; one and the same people voted several times; more than listed voters dropped ballot papers in the mobile box; voters dropped more than allowed ballot papers in the box; voters polled without IDs or expired IDs; voters enlisted in the annex were allowed to vote for the second time; voters unregistered in the joint voters’ list were inserted in the annex. Similar violations were observed almost in every polling station; several precincts were functioning in the police office.”

On November 5, 2008, Adjara Election Commission annulled the results of proportional and majoritarian elections (resolution # 90) and fixed repeated polls (proportional on November 16 and majoritarian December 14).

On the same day, based on the AEC resolution # 93, it was settled to staff PECs with new members; the competition for the commission members was announced before November 7 and Khelvachauri DEC was put in charge of it.

In parallel to it, on November 5, CEC early suspended the authority of Khelvachauri DEC chairman Ilia Tskhadadze. On that day, vacancy competition was announced on the position. According to the CEC’s November 7 resolution Omar Varshanidze was elected to the position and he is still on the position. 

“If those people returned to the PECs, it is a problem; maybe it is not clearly legal problem, because the law does not prohibit it. But the law prohibits employment of the people, who were fined under the administrative law but generally it is problem that commission members could not properly hold elections in the past. Another problem is that law does not envisage any restrictions for similar people. However, DEC shall take this fact into consideration and try not to select those people as commission members,” Gia Kartsivadze, head of GYLA’s Adjara office said. 

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