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Will political parties be fined or not?

December 8, 2016
 
Lana Giorgidze

More than one month has passed since the first and second rounds of the Parliamentary Elections in Georgia. However, in the streets of the capital and not only, the agitation posters of political parties are still hanging. In accordance to the Election Code of Georgia, election subjects are obliged to remove agitation materials within 15 days timeframe after final results of the elections are officially published.

“Article 46 of the Election Code of Georgia regulates the procedures related with the agitation materials. In accordance to the Paragraph 8, any election subject is obliged to remove the agitation materials within 15 days after the final election results are officially published. Otherwise, the election subject will be sanctioned in accordance to the national law. According to the law, the Central Election Code is not authoritative to impose sanctions on the political parties. The local self-governmental bodies are responsible for that considering the fact that they identify the buildings where election materials can be placed,” spokesperson of the CEC Ana Mikeladze told humanrights.ge.

Tbilisi City Mayor Davit Narmania told media that their employees already started removal of election posters of political parties in the central districts of the capital.
“The political parties are obliged to remove their agitation materials, including posters, after the election is over. However, we cannot see any activity in this direction in the capital. We already started mobilization of working groups of the TbilService in the central districts of Tbilisi to remove election posters,” Davit Narmania said.

As the Supervision Service of the Tbilisi City Hall reported humanrights.ge, their office has been monitoring the situation about election banners in the city since December 1 and will take all necessary measures to eradicate the problem in accordance to the law.

“On November 16, 2016, when the parliamentary elections were officially over, the Tbilisi City Hall supervision service sent letters to all election subjects to remind their obligation to remove their agitation materials from the buildings and walls within 15 days as it is required under the election code. The 15-day term expired on December 1, 2016. Consequently, the supervision service monitors the situation about banners and agitation materials in the city since December 1 and will apply relevant legal measures if the violation is observed (Article 150 of the Administrative Code of Georgia),” the supervision service of the Tbilisi City Hall reported.
Representatives of the Georgian Dream notified that the City Hall supervision service had sent letter to them.

“We received the administrative proceeding protocol about agitation materials from the supervision service of the Tbilisi City Hall two days ago. The protocol is dated by December 2 and mentions concrete places where our posters need to be removed. We had a lot of posters in the city; although we removed many of them, still are remaining,” representative of the Georgian Dream Manana Murgulia told humanrights.ge

Although the deadline for the political parties to remove their election agitation materials was December 1, we still see posters in the streets. The same problem was observed during the 2013 presidential elections. Consequently, facts of impunity and violation of the election code still continues.

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