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Human Rights Center is observing the elections in three regions

October 28, 2018
 
28.10.18
Press-Release 

Today, the observers of Human Rights Center are monitoring the Presidential Elections in Kakheti, Shida Kartli and Kvemo Kartli regions.

25 Monitors of HRC are deployed in the ethnic-minority inhabited villages of Sagarejo and Marneuli municipalities; in Akhmeta municipality – namely in Pankisi Gorge and in the ABL villages in Gori municipality. Besides stationed observers, HRC monitors the elections with mobile groups, which are composed of journalists and cameramen of the HRC online newspaper humanrights.ge.  

Throughout the Election Day, the information about observed violations will be collected and processed in the head office and published on the online newspaper of the HRC www.humanrights.ge in Georgian and English languages. The information will be sent to media organizations.

By 14:30, HRC observers lodged 1 complaint and made several remarks in the logbook in different polling stations. 

HRC observer lodged a complaint in Tazakendi village polling station N13 in Marneuli election district N 22, where a voter made a signature in the box of other voter. After the observer’s remark, the voter rushed out of the polling station and did not participate in the elections at all. The registrar refused to make a remark in the box clarifying that the signature was made by unauthorized person.

As reported by HRC monitors, often, PEC members make mistakes, which are promptly improved after their remarks. The violations, which were observed by HRC monitors by now cannot impact the final results of the elections. However, it is a pity that low qualification of the PEC members is still a challenge for the election administration. Majority of procedural violations made by the PEC members are caused by their low qualification and lack of knowledge of election law rather than the desire to fraud the elections. These problems are particularly frequent in the ethnic-minority inhabited villages, where incompetence of the PEC members often cause tension and sometimes conflicts.

Like during previous elections in Georgia, excessive activity and attempt to control the voters by the coordinators and agitators of political parties have become an alarming tendency. “Counters of the voters” are deployed in all polling stations and control supporters of the political parties. They count who has come and who has not among those, whom they recorded in advance. They are speaking with the voters and sometimes it has form of direct agitation.  

HRC and other observation organizations recommend it is essential to regulate this problem by the election law. Today, the election code does not prohibit presence of coordinators/agitators of the political parties in the vicinities of polling stations that hinders the voters to vote freely and at the same time it causes conflicts.

HRC is monitoring the 2018 Presidential Elections in the frame of the project “Monitoring of the 2018 Presidential Elections and ICC Investigation in Georgia,” which is implemented with the financial support of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. 

HRC, through monitoring, will evaluate the compliance of the election process with international and local standards; will promote increased public awareness about ongoing political process in the regions and transparency of the election process in the targeted polling stations.
 
After the Election Day, Human Rights Center will produce a report on the violations observed during the Election Day in Georgian and English languages. The report will present the recommendations to the CEC, Parliament of Georgia and respective state institutions.  

Human Rights Center 

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