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The Constitutional Court upheld the Claim initiated by Human Rights Centre

May 28, 2015
 
Today the Constitutional Court of Georgia upheld the constitutional claim initiated by Human Rights Centre on non-compliance of formation rules for majoritarian electoral system with the Constitution. 

That time executive director of Human Rights Centre Ucha Nanuashvili and the lawyer of organization and constitutionalist Mikheil Sharashidze submitted the constitutional claim to the court on December 4, 2012. 

Human Rights Centre was conducting long term monitoring on process of Parliamentary Elections of October 1, 2012. During this process, the system problem of Election Law was outlined. In order to resolve it, the constitutional claim was prepared. The constitutionality of the formation rule of single mandate majoritarian electoral district for Georgian Parliamentary Elections provided by article 110, sections 1 and 2 of the Organic Law of Georgia –“Election Code of Georgia”, in accordance with article 14 (2) and the first part of article 28 (3) of The Georgian Constitution, was appealed. 

According to the constitutional claim, the fact, that there are huge differences between registered voters in single mandate electoral districts, is deemed as irrelevant with the Principle of Equality provided by article 14 of the Georgian Constitution. For example, in #29 single mandate majoritarian electoral district of Khazbegi the MP is elected by 5,810 voters, while in #3 electoral district of Saburtalo one MP is elected by 128,545 voters. Thus, the vote of electors in Khazbegi district is 22 times weightier than the votes of those registered in Saburtalo district. This way the principle of equality, including principle of voters’ equality and equal voting weight, guaranteed by the Constitution of Georgia, is breached, which is discrimination of voters by their place of residence. 

On May 28, 2015, the first Panel of Constitutional Court of Georgia made the decision on the case “Georgian citizens – Ucha Nanuashvili and Mikheil Sharashidze against Georgian Parliament”. The Constitutional Court satisfied the claim and deemed as non-constitutional those norms of Election Code of Georgia, which provided rules of determining 73 single mandate majoritarian electoral districts. 

Human Rights Centre

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