NGOs about free and fair election environment

On June 8, the Prime-Minister of Georgia signed the resolution of the President of Georgia about fixing the Election Day of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Immediately, after signing the document, the pre-election campaign started and the country switched into the special regime. 

In order to ensure compliance of the October 8, 2016 Parliamentary Elections with the international standards, it is important that all institutions in the country worked properly. To pursue the purpose, we call on state and non-state institutions to show due responsibility and perform their rights and obligations in a suitable manner. 

In particular, we call on:

The Central and Local Authorities in Georgia

- To take responsibility to conduct the elections in peaceful and fair environment. To take into consideration that undemocratic and unfair election environment will affect future perspectives of the country, including its integration with NATO and EU;

- To refrain from the misuse of administrative resources during elections, among them, from implementation of any social initiatives, which aim to gain votes and does not serve long-term development of the country;

- To ensure freedom of media, combat intervention in the work of media and guarantee secure environment as the most important pre-condition for fair elections;

-  To avoid degrading of civil organizations, especially those working on election monitoring and contribute to fair and democratic elections. 

The law enforcement bodies:

- To ensure safety of election parties. To promptly and adequately react on the violations in order to give opportunity to all political parties or individual candidates to perform election campaigns in  peaceful environment;

- To fulfill all their duties impartiality, combat and timely eliminate any violence acts, protect public order and security. Police and Prosecutor’s office shall carry out fair and adequate measures towards people involved in criminal incidents. 

The State Security Service:

- To refrain from intervention in the affairs of political parties and/or influence the election environment. To achieve the goal, the SSG shall conduct effective internal monitoring of the activities of its employees in order to avoid blackmailing, threatening and persecution of political party members, activists and supporters in Tbilisi and regions.. 

The Ministry of Justice:

- To ensure effective and impartial functioning of inter-agency task-force  commission, through constructive mediation of the discussion inside the commission;

- not create artificial obstacles and guarantee the access of the State Audit Service to the relevant database.

The elections administration:

- To pay particular attention to the misuse of administrative resources;

- To consider the lodged complaints thoroughly in order to avoid questions about partiality of the institution. To ensure equal approach to pleas all complaints at every level of election commission;

- To support the work of observation organizations and other interested parties;

- To pay particular attention to the involvement of the representatives of ethnic minorities and people with disabilities in the process of the elections.

The State Audit Service:

- To effectively and impartially monitor the financing of the political parties and periodically inform the society about the results of the monitoring.

The Political Parties:

- To conduct pre-election campaign based on their election program and provide the electorate with the maximum information about their program;

- To base their pre-election campaign on positive agenda and pay particular attention to future plans;

- To pay particular attention to updating ethnic minorities about their pre-election programs;

-  To ensure women’s adequate participation in the election lists and invite ethnic minorities  to their parties;

- To avoid aggressive actions and provocations as well as engagement of their activists in similar activities;

- To refrain from discrediting  the opponents. Refrain from the dissemination of  information about private life. To perform cooperation with the opponent in the format of thematic discussions;

- To respect human rights and to comprehend the importance of fair, secular and democratic state. To refuse instrumentalization  of certain discriminated groups and to avoid manipulation with the state of human rights of vulnerable groups for their political purposes;

- To refrain from hate speech, xenophobic and homophobic statements. To provide ethnic, religious and other discriminated groups with adequate information and work on enhancement of their political engagement;

- To share the responsibility for peaceful  elections environment and be aware that  undemocratic elections in will affect the future development of Georgia and its integration in EU;

- to accept and spend funds during pre-election campaign fairly, transparently and in respect to the law and refrain from bribing  the voters.

The media organizations:

- To impartially broadcast pre-election campaign and the Election Day;

- To update the voters with the election programs of the political parties and candidates; for that purpose, the media organizations shall allocate adequate space for the political debates of election subjects; ;

- To inform the voters about election violations during the pre-election period in unbiased manner;

- Do not intentionally discredit any  political party and operate in accordance to the public interests;

- To ensure the equal access to the media for all political parties during the elections period .

The local election monitoring organizations:

- To stay impartial and neutral during election monitoring ;

- To demonstrate professionalism and stay free from the influence of any political party.

 Partner countries and foreign observation organizations:

- To send long-term monitoring missions to observe the elections.

The signatory organizations:

1. Transparency International – Georgia (TI)

2. International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED)

3. Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA)

4. Civil Development Agency (CiDA)

5. Open Society – Georgia Foundation (OSGF)

6. Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI)

7. The Georgian Journalistic Ethics Charter

8. The Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC)

9. Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center (EMC)

10. Article 42 of the Constitution

11. Human Rights center (HRIDC)

12. Media Development Foundation (MDF)

13. Atlantic Council

14. International Center of Civil Culture (ICCC)

15. Consulting and Training Center (CTC)

16. Center of Development and Democracy 

17. International Society “Civitas Georgica”

18. Center of Democracy and Development (CDD)

19. Public Movement Multinational Georgia (PMMG)

20. Georgian Association of Regional Broadcasters (GARB)

21. Public Advocacy

22. Civic Integration Foundation

23. Green Caucasus

24. Studio – “Re”

25. Management Systems’ Development Center (MSDC)

26. Local Democracy Network Center

27. We for sensible Future (Tserovani)

28. Atinati (Zugdidi)

29. Demosi (Rustavi)

30. Association “Toleranti” (Akhaltsikhe)

31. Association for Civil Society Development “Spectri” (Sagarejo)

32. Racha-Lechkhumi and Lower Svaneti Municipality Resource Center (Ambrolauri)

33. Anti-violence Network of Georgia – Mtskheta-Mtianeti Regional Committee (Mtskheta)

34. Association “Dea” (Zugdidi)

35. Association “Imedi” – IDP Women’s Movement for Peace (Zugdidi)

36. Georgian Democratic Development Union (Ozurgeti)

37. Indigo (Rustavi)

38. Development Fund of Tkibuli (Tkibuli)

39. Regional Development Center (Telavi)

40. Step for Kharagauli (Kharagauli)

41. Dusheti Development Fund (Dusheti)

42. Our Pshavi (Pshavi)