Stories from Rustavi Election Precinct # 16: “She pulled me by hair… then threw Georgian Dream’s t-shirt through the window into the precinct”

Manon Bokuchava, Kvemo Kartli

On September 7, election precinct # 16 in Rustavi was under particular interest of media sources. The head of Precinct Election Commission told police officers and journalists that she was physically assaulted.

“I am always first to open the precinct. I arrived here at about 9:40 am. It is usually very tough inside the office and entering the room I opened windows. Suddenly, somebody grabbed me in the hair and hit me against the window-frame. He was cursing me and National Movement. He said we would see what will happen with us on October 1; then he threw Georgian Dream’s t-shirt into the room,” chair of the PEC # 16 Thea Jgerenaia told humanrights.ge.

She said the attacker was a young man. “I could not see him because after heating the window-frame my eyes got blind. Simply, I heard his voice and it sounded young man,” Jgerenaia added.

This precinct is located in the building of Public School # 6, in the outskirts of the town – so-called Internat Settlement. There is another precinct in the same school building. The school has a watchman and video-cameras are also installed in it. Despite that, nothing proves Jgerenaia’s story except her own story. Nobody has witnessed how she was attacked and neither video-camera had recorded it.

“There is no video-camera in the back yard of the school. This incident occurred exactly at the back window of the school building. There was nobody in our or neighboring precinct at that time. I could not shout and call people for help either,” Thea Jgerenaia said.

Humanrights.ge was looking for the incident witness during three hours and visited all commercial entities and residential houses in the neighborhood.

10 meters away from the school building we found the election HQ of the National Movement. Initially we asked them whether they had detected suspicious person at about 10:00 am or whether they had witnessed the incident near the school window. They said the office opened after the incident had occurred and they had not seen anything.

A shop, beauty salon and bakery are functioning in the building on the left side of the Precinct # 16. They start working at 9:00 am. Although Jgerenaia alleges that the incident had occurred at about 09:40 am and the commercial offices had opened about one hour before that, the employees of the shop, salon and bakery stated they had not heard any noise from school. They learned about the incident only after TV-Companies arrived there.

There are two residential buildings near the polling station: Rcheulishvili Street # 16 and 18. The windows of the residential buildings look at the school. There is not even a tree between the buildings that could prevent inhabitants from seeing what had happened in the polling station. It is also noteworthy that district is not busy with transport movement because of its location in the outskirts of the town. So, there is high probability that inhabitants of the residential buildings just across the street could easily see the incident in the school yard.

Despite similar advantageous circumstances, residents of the residential buildings across the street told us they had not heard any noise and had not seen any suspicious person near the school during the time mentioned.

The main character of the incident said she is not connected with any political party. However, she recalled an incident with a voter on September 6. The chairwoman of the PEC said the voter got angry when he did not find his name on the list. But Jgerenaia said he had not attacked her because she remembers voices of both persons and they are different people.

Soon, we learned that Jgerenaia, who is not member of any political party, applied to the National Movement for help after the incident. The party sent their supporter to find out the situation on the place. The conflict was resolved after he arrived at the precinct.

Georgian Dream stated that Jgerenaia’s case looks like provocation. “Of course we will wait for the investigation conclusion. However, since the victim alleges that our t-shirt was thrown into the office, we doubt it was well-planned provocation. We think somebody wanted to discredit us,” Nino Lomidze, head of Georgian Dream’s Rustavi office said.