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Observers Were Not Registered

January 4, 2008

The Human Rights Center, which conducts monitoring of the presidential elections on January 5 2008, blamed the District Election Commission of the Lagodekhi Electoral District # 15 for breaching the Georgian Election Code.

The Human Rights Center, a non-governmental organization, monitors the elections in several regions of Georgia. Thus, the Central Election Commission (CEC) registered the organization. According to Article 69, Paragraph VII of the Georgian Election Code a domestic observing organization shall provide the secretary of the election commission with a list of observers to the district and local election commissions at least five days before the polls.

On December 30 2007, the Human Rights Center got in touch with Ivane Zurikashvili, the chairman of the Lagodekhi Local Election Commission, who had not received the voters’ lists by fax because the fax machine belonged to the Administrative Board and there was nobody at the administration at that moment. On December 31 at 5:45 PM, representatives of the organization arrived in Lagodekhi, however nobody was present at the local election commission except the supervisor. The same happened on January 3 at 10:10 AM.

The Human Rights Center got in touch with Lali Gelashvili, the secretary of the Lagodekhi Local Election Commission and informed her about the situation. In response Lali Gleashvili started to insult him: ‘Go and bring suit against us whenever you want. How can you claim that we were not here? Are you crazy? You do not have any business here and you do not know what to do,” said the secretary.

Later on, Gela Gelashvili, the husband of the secretary, called the representatives of the election commission who said that he was member of the municipality fraction of the National Movement. He demanded not to bring suit to any instances otherwise the observers would have problems.

The Human Rights Center considers that Lagodekhi Local Election Commission # 15 deliberately prevented the observing organization to monitor the elections in the Lagodekhi district. The Human Rights Center connects this incident to serious violations discovered by the lawyers for the center in the Lagodekhi District.

Gela Mtivlishvili, Kakheti

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