Georgian Dream Filed 102 Complaints to Rustavi District Election Commission

Manon Bokuchava, Kvemo Kartli 

Polling stations were opened in Rustavi a week ago like in the entire Georgia. Although short time has passed since their opening, 102 complaints were already filed by the Rustavi organization of the Coalition Georgian Dream.

Head of the Georgian Dream’s election HQ spoke with humanrights.ge about noisy meeting in the District Election Commission on August 29. She said their complaints were discussed by the DEC on that day.

“Violations were observed in almost every precinct from the moment of opening in Rustavi. There were Xerox apparatus in the polling stations and our commission members could not copy protocols that caused set of problems. As we found out, the protocols drawn up during the session are different from those which were submitted to the DEC,” head of Georgian Dream’s Rustavi Office Nino Lomidze. 

The sessions were held in all polling stations on August 26. As soon as precincts were opened to elect people for the following positions: chairman of the precinct election commission, deputy chairman of the PEC and commission secretary.

“Commission members from our coalition claim that names of the people who were elected to be chairpersons of the PECs were not written in the protocols. In addition to that, at the PEC # 6 we have similar situation – Christian-Democrats and other similar “opposition” parties voted for the candidate of the National Movement for the position of chairman of the commission. As a result, their candidate received 9 votes though the protocol states that that person received 7 instead 9 votes. Satellite parties of the government were omitted from the list of his supporters. This decision was made after a long consideration; maybe they realized that overall support of one candidate was not nice. All in all, we have filed about 102 complaints. Most of them are about protocols of the first sessions at the polling stations,” Lomidze said.

We studied the protocol # 1 of the PEC # 6. All commission members signed the first paper of the document. However, those signatures prove their attendance at the session. As for other papers, which present the results of the session, they are not signed by commission members; there is no place for their signatures either; the papers are stapled.

Consequently, it is not difficult to change, replace, etc of other papers of the protocol except the first page. 

Head of Rustavi DEC Soso Shvelidze told Humanrights.ge: “Election Code does not oblige us to have Xerox apparatus at the precincts on the first day of its opening. You know Rustavi is not large city and it takes only 20 minutes to get to our office [DEC] from each precinct. Those, who needed protocol, could come to our office, spend 20 minutes on it and we could make a copy of the document for them. Some commission members acted so. Those, who were lazy to come, it is their problem. As for information about changing of protocols, - we got in touch with the administrations and commission members of those precincts, they wrote explanation letters and claim that similar facts had not occurred in their polling stations.”

“What shall I do, who shall I believe?!” asked DEC chairman rhetorically.