Giorgi Janelidze
Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili criticized one of the pre-election video clips of th new political center “Girchi’s” disseminated via social media and on the web page of the organization itself. The direct target group of the pre-election advertisement is youth and encourages them to participate in the elections. At the same time, the video-roll presents the “Girchi’s” attitude towards elderly people.
“Girchi” addresses young electorates with the video clip. The clip says that mostly elderly people participate in elections. Consequently, it brings unwilling results for young people and often disappoints them. The video roll criticizes politicians, who shall take care of education and employment of the youth. Instead, they promise 200, 300 or 500 GEL pension to retired people. “If you go to the elections and vote, you will get what you want, but if you do not go to vote, you will receive what your grandmother and grandfather want” - this is the final slogan in the clip.
The leaders of the “Girchi” believe that until now pre-election video rolls of the political parties were targeted at the old people’s interests, which is not popular choice for the country. It became motive of the video-roll for the young generation.
The Public Defender declares that the interests of people of different age are not balanced in the clip. In the contrary, it emphasizes that if the country will stay focused on the interests of elderly people, it will hinder the progress and development of the country.
“The Public Defender of Georgia thinks that this attitude fosters stereotypes towards aged people, who, in most cases, are anyway discriminated. Those kinds of approaches favor negative prejudices about participation of old people in the public life of the country. Besides, there is a threat that they will be discriminated because of age in future”, - the statement of the Ombudsmen reads.
Ucha Nanuashvili called on the new political center to remove the “pre-election advertisement containing stereotypes” from Internet, because it encourages discrimination of certain group of people”.
The administration of te new political party “Girchi” has radically different opinion. The press speaker of the organization Marta Baramidze clarifi to humarights.ge that “Girchi” will not fulfill the proposal of the Public Defender.
The press speaker of “Girchi” clarifies that the Public Defender did not specify which part of the clip is discriminative: “We think it is not discrimination at all. Vice versa, I think, that we sent very good message to youth, in order to motivate them to come to the elections. Of course, we will not remove the clip from the social media just because of indirectly developed imagination of the Public Defender. The clip has already fulfilled its purpose and will fulfill it in the future too. We wanted to create a virus video. Nowadays, mostly elderly people participate in the elections in Georgia. The young people were always passive. This is very big problem and those messages address those problem. We did not mean to offend anybody”.
The lawyer of International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) Nino Rizhamadze, does not see the elements of discrimination in the video clip of “Girchi”: “ “Fair Elections” considers the clip as the political party’s pre-election message to electorate. We think there is no discrimination or offence in the political advertisement”.
Irina Putkaradze, the head of the “Public Advocacy”, has different opinion: “The problem of the discrimination of aged people started after the Rose Revolution in 2003 in Georgia and their authors and co-authors do the same even now. The video of “Girchi” clearly contains classical elements of the discrimination and disrespect to elderly people. The discrimination based on the age is the variation of aggression. It is very sad when the political party chooses elements of the discrimination as t main slogan of their pre-election advertisement. I think there are very offensive statements in the clip, for example: “you will receive your grandmother’s and grandfather’s”. The political parties shall explain to youngsters that aging does not mean deterioration of working capacity, health and old-fashioned thinking, and not in contrary – belittle and underestimate aged people”, - Irina Putkaradze told humanrights.ge.
Most probably the video-roll of the Girchi will remain in internet, because the political party does not plan to fulfill the request of the Public Defender and the Ombudsman cannot force them to follow his recommendation.
The head of the Equality Unit of the Public Defender’s Office Ketevan Shubashvili clarified to humanrights.ge that the Public Defender supervises the execution of antidiscrimination law among public and private persons: “The situation is more complicated with private persons, because the forcing mechanism to make them carry out the proposals of the Public Defender based on antidiscrimination law does not exist. The Public Defender elaborated legislative initiative concerning the issue and it is already in the agenda of parliamentary hearing.
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