Abuse of power or politically motivated selective approach

Kristine Pakhomov

In March 2016, directors of Tbilisi based kindergartens were massively fired from jobs. Representatives of the Tbilisi Kindergartens Management Agency and Tbilisi City Hall state the directors were fired based on the Audit report which claimed about their negligence and unreasonable expenditure of funds. However, the fired directors speak about other motives and reasons.

Khatia Lashkarashvili had been director at the Kindergarten # 215 since 2007. She was dismissed on March 21, 2016 based on the audit report. Lashkarashvili said the audit report was not well-qualified that is proved by the fact that the Kindergartens Management Agency does not comment about it. Lashkarashvili clarified with humanrights.ge that the Audit blamed her in unreasonable expenditure of funds, which were allocated for food. 

“Every month, the Kindergartens Management Agency transfers funds for children’s nutrition in Tbilisi based 160 kindergartens according to the number of registered children in each of them. The kindergartens cannot spend all funds because 100% of registered children are never present in kindergartens. It is impossible that the director preliminarily knew how many children will come to the kindergarten on that day and spend money accordingly. For that reason, we have verbal and written agreements that the director is allowed to forward the funds on other needs of the kindergarten. I would like to note that when a director asks funds, for example for books, furniture and correct management of the school preparation program, the Agency usually gives one reply: “Use the funds you have left from nutrition budget.” It means, the Agency purposefully made us to breach the rules,” Khatia Lashkarashvili said.

According to her, the fact that activists of the political party Georgian Dream were appointed to the position of the director, deputy director and other staff-members in the Kindergarten # 2015, demonstrates political motives of the dismissal process. “According to the 2007 competition results none of the new people in the kindergarten met the qualification requirements. Moreover, they could not even pass the minimal barrier in test-exams. Consequently, the question who was their reference is crucial,” the former director of the kindergarten # 215 Khatia Lashkarashvili said.

The illegally dismissed directors lodged joint lawsuit to the court. However, judge Irakli Kopaliani did not accept their suit. The lawyer of the former directors Beka Kvinikadze said the court rejected the appeal based on groundless reasons. Kvinikadze claims the Judge Kopaliani incorrectly clarified some norms in the Civil Procedural Code of Georgia.

“I defend rights of four persons who were illegally dismissed from the Tbilisi City Hall. I lodged joint lawsuit to the Tbilisi City Court in February 2016 and the civil case was registered on Judge Irakli Kopaliani; he accepted it. However, he rejected almost the same lawsuit – he made absolutely different decisions on equal cases. In his clarification letter the judge said there was no ground for joint lawsuit. According to the clarification, the judge contradicts his own decision on previous case. We may assume that the judge refrained from responsibility. In similar case, the judge interpreted the law according to his own position that is inadmissible. Personally for me, the lawyer, it is inadmissible to leave this illegal decision in force because all verdicts will have practical use. It is inadmissible to damage the norms of the Civil Code. We decided to submit individual lawsuit to the Tbilisi Appeal Court where we will prove that the judge made wrong decision,” Beka Kvinikadze said.

On his side, the Kindergartens Management Agency evaluated the protest of parents as politically motivated process and addressed them to refrain from participating in the protest actions. 

Political parties also got interested in the case. They think the directors were dismissed because of political reasons. Members of the United National Movement proposed the Tbilisi City Council to establish a special commission to study the case of dismissed directors. The City Council member from the UNM Iraklil Abesadze said the opponents did not support their proposal on special commission because they waited for the court decision.

“The process did not start now. Last autumn the directors of kindergartens were forced to fire their employees. Early in December, we held fraction session where we invited the director of the Kindergartens Management Agency. He was strictly warned that if several tens people will quit jobs together, he would be responsible for that. Forcing a person to quit a job based on personal application is a crime punishable under Article 169 of the Criminal Code of Georgia. According to the Agency conclusion the directors were fired not for misappropriation of funds but for spending the saved money on other purposes that was most likely agreed with the Agency. The monitoring service visited the kindergartens every month and monitored expenditure of funds though they could not find any problems. Consequently, we may raise issue of responsibility of the Agency director. Instead dismissed directors they appointed the so-called “zone leaders” of the ruling coalition. It means the only purpose of this personnel changes was to give jobs to their political actives before the October Parliamentary Elections and to get rid of the people who refused to become their activists,” Irakli Abesadze said.

“Similar reorganization is normal process in every service and aims at improving the effectiveness of the system,” said the director of the Kindergartens Management Agency Temur Tordinava. He denies political motives of the directors’ dismissal.