Categories
Journalistic Survey
Articles
Reportage
Analitic
Photo Reportage
Exclusive
Interview
Foreign Media about Georgia
Editorial
Position
Reader's opinion
Blog
Themes
Children's Rights
Women's Rights
Justice
Refugees/IDPs
Minorities
Media
Army
Health
Corruption
Elections
Education
Penitentiary
Religion
Others

Kutaisi City Council Has Been Staffed with Majority of National Movement Members

June 18, 2010
Shorena Kakabadze, Kutaisi

“It was calm, but rigged elections, which was not less falsified than the previous ones,” the opposition parties evaluated the municipal elections of 2010 negatively; as a result of the elections the ruling party came into the local authority again.

There are 21 members of the National Movement, 3 members of the Christian-Democrat Movement and one member of Alliance for Georgia in the new City Council of Kutaisi. For the next four year, the City Council will have the same chairperson -Amiran Khvadagiani. All ten single mandate members will be from the ruling party; they obtained quite a high number of votes in the elections.

The United National Movement gained 64, 45 %, the Christian-Democrat Movement – 21, 27 % and Alliance for Georgia – 5, 25 %; the opposition parties and non-governmental organizations protested against the results but in vain.

“The elections cannot be evaluated based on the Election Day only. It was the case when people did not have equal conditions. The governmental officials were standing at the precincts and jotted down the names of people who visited the precincts. It was psychological oppression. The employees of public agencies were also oppressed. In addition to that, the society had nihilist attitude towards the elections and this directly impacted the results of the elections,” assessment of the representatives Kutaisi office of the Young Lawyers Association.

The leaders of the local organization state that the municipal elections were carried out with incorrectly drawn up protocols and by unqualified commission members. “We withdrew the list of commission members of 129 precincts (among them 3 were special precincts) in order to prevent similar mistakes in future. It is a fact that these people were not competent enough and it impacted the final results of the elections. We need certified commission chairpersons, deputy chairpersons and secretaries in order to avoid technical mistakes in future,” said the program director of the Kutaisi office of the GYLA Nodar Jikia.

Despite all that, the city council already had session and started their activities with enthusiasm. The topic of the elections is still urgent. Besides the non-governmental organizations and opposition parties, the society also protests the results. The pre-election expectation of the people – “the National Movement will win it despite all our efforts” – really came true.

Experts think that a similar feeling of the society really influenced the final results of the elections. According to the District Election Commission # 59, the turnout of the voters in the precincts was 34, 35 percent that made 55 466 voters from Kutaisi. Most of them were brought to the polling stations by members of the United National Movement.

News