Civic Campaign “This Affects You” Calls Upon Government To Impartially and Consistently Respond to Pre-Election Violations

Civil society representatives participating in the Campaign “This Affects You” believe that recent activities of the Chamber of Control of Georgia, Judiciary and Prosecutor’s Office against political parties are characterized by subjective and unequal approach. Accusations and imposed sanctions on political parties by the above-listed agencies mostly rely on one-sided and improperly grounded facts or assumptions. Law enforcement bodies impose sanctions on political parties in a haste that hinders careful investigation of circumstances and proper implementation of their right to defense.

Despite unanimous request of the civic society to ensure public access to pluralist media, the sources to disseminate and receive information are restricted day-by-day and in most cases it has political motives.

In this light, the purpose of all nongovernmental and media organizations participating in the Campaign is to ensure fair and peaceful environment for the upcoming parliamentary elections, to stabilize political process and call upon:

President of Georgia to instruct the government to immediately take relevant measures to ensure fair pre-election and media environment in the country. Otherwise, the legitimacy of the upcoming parliamentary election might be undermined;

Chamber of Control to stop “using unequal and biased approaches in the party monitoring process; to rely their evaluations on legally and factually well-grounded and thoroughly investigated circumstances; “to probe with equal efficiency and to seek adequate responsibility not only towards the offences committed by the representatives and supporters of opposition political forces, but also towards the ruling party as well.

 to stop unequal and partial approach in the process of monitoring of political parties; to carry out equally operative investigative activities and to impose adequate sanctions on opposition and ruling political parties, their representatives and supporters;

Judiciary authority to carry out a full, objective and comprehensive examination of the case circumstances, to ensure equality of the parties and to provide them with sufficient time for preparing for hearings and producing evidence; to take high public interest into consideration and to maximally ensure attendance of interested people at trials; to be particularly careful about imposing preventive measures;

Prosecutor’s office to operatively respond to the information spread by media and nongovernmental organizations about facts when citizens are persecuted on political grounds and when media representatives are hindered to implement their professional activities;

Inter-Agency Task Force for Free and Fair Elections to raise the issue of liability of those officials involved in misuse of administrative resources or in intimidation of voters.

Civic Campaign “This Affects You”
June 12, 2012