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Teachers from Akhaltsikhe vs. “Rigged” Presidential Award

December 2, 2008

Gulo Kokhodze, Akhaltsikhe

Elections of the teachers-nominees for the presidential award in Akhaltsikhe resulted into a bout of serious anxiety. Teachers claim that the elections were rigged. “They selected nominees among their relatives and not among best and most experienced teachers,’ said teachers.

Eight out of 500 teachers in Akhaltsikhe will receive president’s scholarship. The winners will receive 200 GEL a month from November 2008 till June of 2009.

Teachers from Akhaltsikhe based public schools consider that selection rules should be changed because nominees for the scholarship are selected based on personal acquaintances and not based on their abilities and what they have actually accomplished..

According to the “Regulation of Selecting Teachers for the Presidential Award” each school should nominate one teacher. Councils of teachers should elect one teacher from their schools based on a secret ballot. At the same meeting the council should select a teacher who will be in the commission that has been established within the organization of district educational resource centers. The commission member shall promote their candidate to the commission and shall participate in the selection of winning teachers.

34 schools out of total 39 in Akhaltsikhe district part in the elections. Eight quotas assigned to the district were granted to Akhaltsikhe Public Schools # 1 and 2, also public schools in the villages of Klde, Tkemlani, Sviri, Ani, Ferisi and Sakuneti.

Armenian Public School # 3 nominated Manik Khachkavangtsian, teacher of primary school, for the presidential award.  However, education resource center did not elect him.

Manik Khachkavangtsian: “Nobody knew me there and did not pay attention to me. Neither did they pay any attention to the person who nominated me.  I complied with all requests of the nomination but they selected teachers between 20-25 and who started working at school only two days before.

Maia Mekvabishvili, teacher of Biology at Akhaltsikhe Public School # 6, stated that elections were incorrectly conducted and the system was to be blamed.

Maia Mekvabishvili: “Most nominees were not worthy of being selected. Commission members knew who to vote for a long time.”

Robert Muradian, director of Public School # 3 is not satisfied with the election system. He said only one ethnic Armenian teacher was awarded the honor in Akhaltsikhe district while half of the local population is ethnic Armenian.

“It was a big deal,” and it was already all fixed previously said Marina Zedginidze, director of Russian School # 2.

Teachers from schools state that they had short time to select nominees from their schools.

“We finished nomination, ballots and election within the span of two hours. Nobody requested any certificates to find out whether we were claiming correct information about the nominated teachers or not. Anyway, there was no sense in trying to prove anything. Teachers from village schools knew who to vote for long before,” said Mzia Natenadze, representative of the nominee from Public School # 2.

Lia Kobesashvili, head of education recourse center in Akhaltsikhe district, explained that schools estimate criteria for selecting nominees is left up to them. “We received 6 criteria from each school. We then discussed it and then created a common base. Although they had only two minutes to promote candidate but they should have been short in their statements and we should learn how to speak directly to the main points.”

The results of the elections are already confirmed in spite the protest of the teachers.

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