Transparency International: Elections Held without Serious Incidents
By Tea Mariamidze
Tuesday, October 30
Non-governmental organization Transparency International (TI) Georgia says that October 28 presidential elections of Georgia were held in a “largely peaceful environment, without serious violent incidents.”
However, the NGO noted that TI observers reported up to 130 insignificant and relatively serious violations.
Transparency International Georgia deployed 350 observers to monitor the elections. Its static observers covered 300 precincts throughout the country. In addition, 45 mobile groups were also involved in the monitoring of the elections.
The NGO says a large number of coordinators, especially of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party-backed presidential candidate Salome Zourabichvili, were observed outside of nearly every precinct. Most of them were standing outside with automobiles and people could be observed getting in and getting out of them on a periodic basis.
“There is a reason to believe that voter buying could be taking place. Outside of six precincts, our observers have witnessed the alleged handing out of money,” the statement reads.
Moreover, TI says their observer noticed that in the precinct #94 of Zugdidi #67 district a commission member responsible for the voting box threw in several envelopes on behalf of Zourabichvili into the box.
“Notably, this incident contains elements of the violation of criminal law. During the vote count, our suspicions were confirmed further, because the number of ballots retrieved from the ballot box exceeded the total number of voters who participated in elections by one,” TI said, adding they requested nullification of the results of this precinct.
As during the previous elections, the NGO stated that Precinct Election Commissions (PEC) lacked necessary qualifications, which resulted in “aggressive and unconstructive behavior on their part.” According to the statement, there are serious concerns with the qualifications of the members of the PECs and no significant progress has been made in this regard over the years.
TI believes that traditional training methods are not effective for the commission members, adding some PECs were unable to handle rudimentary tasks, such as protecting the secrecy of ballot, admitting observers without interference to the precinct, filling out the control sheet, dividing responsibilities by casting of lots, checking the electoral ink marking, etc.
Moreover, as the NGO says, there were issues with voter list in many electoral precincts and a number of voters couldn’t find themselves in the list, while some observed that their dead relatives were still on it.
Transparency International called on the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the alleged attempt at fixing elections. Also, it says that political parties should refrain from vote buying.
Also, the NGO called on the Central Election Commission to take appropriate measures in regard to the low qualification of the commission members and to ensure favorable conditions for observers and prevent any aggressive behavior by the commission members.
