District Governors Are Changed in Guria Region

Nino Mshvidobadze, Guria

Two months have passed since the parliamentary elections. In Guria, like in other regions, resignation of senior officials of local governments and replacement of old personnel with new people is urgent topic. 

This problem was easily resolved in Ozurgeti. Interim district governor Ilia Vashakmadze filed resignation letter to the Ozurgeti municipal board. The board satisfied his application and last week offered Kote Sharashenidze’s candidature to the chairman of the municipal board. Sharashenidze was leader of the Georgian Dream’s local election office and head of Coalition’s local organization.

As soon as Sharashenidze was approved for the position of interim governor, deputy governor Mikheil Gogotishvili and attorney of Likhauri village applied for resignation. Sharashenidze hopes some other officials will also be clever enough to resign based on their own wish.

As for Chokhatauri district, majoritarian MP Temur Chkhuaseli has already selected new candidate for the district governor. Georgian Dream’s local office has two candidates –Tamaz Jincharadze and Irakli Akhobadze. However, Lela Imedashvili still occupies position of the governor in Chokhatauri.

Situation is more complicated in Lanchkhuti district. Four people have been on hunger-strike in front of the district administration building for more than two weeks. They have several demands and one of them is resignation of interim district governor Kakha Askurava. Lanchkhuti municipal board made decision and announced competition on vacant place of the district governor; competition-examination commission was set up which is chaired by the chairman of the municipal board Zviad Apkhazava in accordance to the law. Initially, 17 people were members of the commission but then it was reduced to 15. Five members represent National Movement and municipal board.

The first session of the commission was noisy enough. Four members from the Georgian Dream – Roman Bitsadze, Marika Turnava, Elguja and Levan Chkhaidzes left session. “This commission cannot be unbiased because five out of 14 members represent UNM. Besides that, society is represented with few people and they cannot impact decision-making process,” they said and refused to be members of the Commission.

Humanrights.ge conversed with Zviad Apkhazava and asked to comment on their opponents’ decision.

-Initially, we intended to have 17 members in the commission and we applied to the Ozurgeti office of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and representatives of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy but they refused to participate in the commission’s activities due to the specifics of their activities. Four people left the commission and now we have only 11 members. When an organization announces competition, its members shall necessarily be members of the competition commission. However, Amiran Gigineishvili represents nongovernmental organization Information Center and not municipal board in the commission.

-Does the law regulate who shall be commission member and how many?

-The law does not state that a representative of the organization, where the competition is announced, shall not be member of the commission. The number of commission members is not restricted. We decided to invite chairmen or deputy chairmen of both fractions in the municipal board as well as chairman of the mandate commission. As for other members, they are lawyer Tamaz Kunchulia and Amiran Gigineishvili whom we already spoke about. We tried to maximally represent municipal board members in the commission and increase number of representatives of civil society in it.

-However, your opponents claim that few representatives of civil society are invited to the commission.

-Editor-in-chiefs of all three local newspapers, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and political parties are members of the commission. Unless Turnava, Bitsadze and Chkhaidzes had left the commission, society would have had balanced representation in the commission.