Categories
Journalistic Survey
Articles
Reportage
Analitic
Photo Reportage
Exclusive
Interview
Foreign Media about Georgia
Editorial
Position
Reader's opinion
Blog
Themes
Children's Rights
Women's Rights
Justice
Refugees/IDPs
Minorities
Media
Army
Health
Corruption
Elections
Education
Penitentiary
Religion
Others

Terry Benham Assesses that Voters List in Georgia, Fines, and Rule of Law are Questionable

August 24, 2012

Interpressnews

A special advisor of the NGO Committee for Open Democracy and elections expert Terry Benham assesses that the voters’ lists, fines, and rule of law are questionable in Georgia.

Benham has held multiple leadership roles within the Republican Party and has advised numerous political campaigns at the presidential, senatorial, and congressional level in the United States. He is a special advisor to the Committee for Open Democracy on ballot security and integrity.


“Tens of international organizations point out the same problems, the largest organizations among them underscores verification of voters’ lists, size of the levied political fines, and selectively applying so called law. We discovered some interesting facts about this”, the American expert says, who will hold a special press conference about specific details today.
Benham’s press conference will take place at the press club of InterPressNews at 13:00 today.

In particular Terry Benham showed several photos which reflected ruined houses on Tbilisi streets Javakhishvili # 13-19, Dadiani # 22 and Barnovi# 84, but he also noted that on locations 46, 42 and 8. Voters are registered.

Benham also said this information was discovered in a list provided last month and he hopes that the new list will not have these problems. According to him, in the recent period there is a noticeably large size of the levied political fines and selectively applying so called law.

“In recent days, a new law has been created about Advertisement campaigns. We call this changing rules in the middle of game, which raises doubts that legislation changes were done for political motives. 10 million lari excessive fines were imposed on a popular Georgian Footballer player due to violation election legislation. This fine is three times more than it was ever used in the USA. Such facts harm the election process” – said Terry Benham

According to him he is not in Georgia to criticize someone from the opposition or government, but he is here in order to give advice to political parties and obey the rule of law.

Georgia is aspiring to become a Nato and EU member and it is in no one’s interest to have a question mark if elections were legitimate. Elections are a litmus test”.- said Benham and added in October elections Open Democracy Committee will have 20 observers.

In addition, Bryan Meford, CEO of "Open Democracy Committee", explained that observers will soon pass registration procedures of the Central Election Commission.

At a press-conference, journalists were interested in the funding of Open Democracy Committee about which CEO said that Open Democracy Committee is a non commercial organization that is supported by private donations and monitors election process in Georgia and Ukraine

News