TI Georgia: gov’t still lacks will to hold elections in line with top democratic standards

Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia) says in its summary of monitoring of yesterday’s municipal elections that the Georgian Dream (GD) government ‘still lacks the political will to hold elections in line with high-level democratic standards and that the country is still far off from its ambitious election reform goals.’ 

TI Georgia says that it had more than 300 observers for the elections  who recorded 160 insignificant and relatively serious violations during the day. 

“We have filed 30 complaints and requested annulment of results of two precincts in Marneuli,” TI Georgia says.

TI Georgia says that the country’s Central Election Commission presented preliminary results after over 11 hours following the closure of electoral precincts, ‘which is a deterioration of its practice’

The alleged violations recorded by the organisations concerned casting ballots multiple times, violence at polling stations, verbal abuse towards journalists, complications in making  election result summaries at precincts, interfering observers’ activities, violation of secrecy of vote and others. 

TI Georgia has called on law enforcement agencies to ‘swiftly and effectively investigate’ all alleged instances of criminal violations and precinct commissions to timely fill in the summary protocols in order to ‘dispel any concerns’ of undue interference. 

It also said that the use of remodelled voting booths should be reconsidered due to a high risk of violation of secrecy of vote and that it is necessary to raise the professional qualifications and work ethics of electoral administrative staff, especially on the level of precinct electoral commissions.