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Tamar Zhvania: “The society believes that we no longer discuss falsification problems”

September 22, 2016
 
Giorgi Janelidze

Humanrights.ge interviewed Tamar Zhvania, the chairwoman of the Central Election Commission, about the pre-election environment. 

- How would you evaluate the current pre-election environment and the work of the CEC before the 2016 elections? How are the polling stations ready to conduct elections in the regions?

- Not only based on the CEC’s point of view, but also according to the internal reports of the observing organizations, the environment has been obviously improved. If we compare the upcoming elections with the previous elections, of course there are few problems, but almost no serious violations. Of course, small violations take place, but in general, the environment is quiet. We offered a lot of good new services to the voters. For the first time in Georgia, 800 000 voters checked themselves in the pay boxes. We also added the services like “find yourself” and “find your polling station” on the web pages of mobile applications. For the first time we will have special frames for the voters with eyesight problems to enable them to vote independently.  The number of adapted polling stations increased from 102 to 1115 and it is also big progress. The information about the candidates will be available in audio format. We will prepare all materials, including video-clips, in Azerbaijani and Armenian languages. So, the CEC with those and other new services offers good things to voters. 

- Will the new division of the election districts create obstacles for the election administration?

- It was and is very important challenge, because it caused a lot of changes, including the functions of the district election commissions. Concrete election commission might be obliged to administrate more than one (and it is really like that), for example, 5 election districts. We have main district election commissions [DECs] with full authority and additional election district commissions. It creates certain obstacles when the parliamentary and mayor’s elections are at the same time in 6 election districts. Besides, the mid-term city council elections, when the municipality borderline is important for the mayor’s elections. For the parliamentary elections there is different border and those are kind of administrative-logistical difficulties. However, we managed the decision-making process in a way that we believe, we have the resources and legal opportunities to overcome the obstacles. 

- How is the CEC prepared for the expected incidents? 

- If the dispute goes into the legal frame, we will use legal mechanisms. Untill now there were not very difficult situations, except one case: Kortskheli incident was very good example for everybody. There is no place for violence in the election process. We worked a lot with foreign experts with the support of the International Foundation Elections Systems (IFES). Together with the MIA we participated in a very important training on the Elections and Security dedicated to the international standards and good practices. We had two-day working meeting. Now, for the elections, we signed the memorandum together with MIA, which aims to prevent any possible violations during the elections process and directly on the Election Day. We have to know precisely what the police or the CEC should do if the conflict starts. The most important is security and peaceful environment and it will support voters to express their will in a free way. 

- After 2012 Parliamentary Elections, Human Rights Center and other NGOs pointed out that there were no serious violations and falsification during the elections. However, as a result of low professionalism of the election commissions’ members,  mistakes and miscarriages were identified. What steps were taken to engage more qualified people in the commissions for 2016 elections? 

- Here the most important issue is that it cannot be evaluated as falsification, but accidental mistake, technical miscarriage, which can be corrected. The society (the observers’ reports clearly indicate it) believes we do not discuss the falsification issue anymore and we developed as the society. The discussion is about technical or professional problems, which can be corrected. We constantly offer trainings to the administration members to improve their skills. 

On the one hand, it is a problem that the DEC members were selected only one month ago. One month might not be enough for them to adequately study the legislation provisions, namely the election code. However, we count on their experience. Nowadays there are people in the DECs, who have already worked on several elections and their number is not small. At the same time, there are observers, alumni of our educational projects and right now we conduct second wave of the trainings. The DECs will attend 4 trainings. We shall try to prevent technical mistakes or any kind of competence problem in the election process. 

- The court satisfied the lawsuit of the political party Industry will Save Georgia and the political party will participate in the elections. Their leader Gogi Topadze declared the issue is in somebody’s interest. Do you plan to appeal the decision? 

- Of course, there was no particular interest. Decision of the CEC and the chairwoman had normal legal motive. It is clearly written in the law that if a political party does not present the election list before the set deadline, its registration will be canceled. When I published the decision, it was totally within the frames of the law. However, the court took a decision and in general, the court has more right to law formation, than any administrative body. The judge additionally explained the law and he/she has the right to do it. The judge considered the submitted documents enough for the registration of the political party. I am not going to appeal the decision at the Tbilisi Appeal Court. 

- The Republican Party protested the procedure of assigning election numbers. What do you think, how well-grounded their protest was? 

- The Republican Party appealed the part of the CEC resolution. It was clear that the Republican Party disputed the part where two concrete political parties, to whom the CEC gave the numbers, will have advantages over others. Although, it was written in the statement, that they shall not have the advantage and they will be able to use the political party’s number after all political parties would participate in the ballot and receive the numbers. The CEC won trials in both instances of the court. So the CEC decision is in force. Another issue was that they would not have an advantage and whether it was applied in relation with concrete political parties. I started study of this case, whether they had used the number before they could do it based on the resolution and very soon I will take the decision.

- What miscarriages were identified by the CEC during the pre-election period?

- There were several incidents during the pre-election period. It is particularly important, that now we processed the case, which were not observed during the previous elections at all. Before elections there was issue about participation of a foreign citizen in the pre-election campaign, when the dispute started about the ex-president and legally it was almost impossible to resolve this problem, as well as the problem of alleged participation of certain persons in the pre-election campaigns via social networks because similar cases are not regulated by the law. Nowadays the CEC has issued protocols on 2 violation facts: in one case, the Kobuleti District Election Commission fined one of the observers of the organization with 500 GEL for the participation in the pre-election campaign. Besides, we issued protocol against Baghdati district administration for the participation in the pre-election campaign via their official web-page and posting the support materials on it. They, as public servants, did not have right to do it during working hours. 

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