Amendments to the Election Code Made Lawsuit of Nongovernmental Organizations Useless

Maka Malakmadze, Adjara

On July 27, Parliament of Georgia passed amendments to the Article 49, Paragraph III of the Election Code through third hearing. The amendments significantly narrow the scope of the provision and it would apply to the period 60 days before the elections. Further, the prohibition would no longer apply to boosting of budget progams, as well as initiation of unlanned transfers or boosting of planned ones.

Before these changes, on July 24, Adjara Supreme Council amended the budget and increased it with 14 722 700 lari; 13 554 400 lari of it will be spent on infrastructural and social projects. Adjara based several nongovernmental organizations appealed the decision of the Adjara legislative body at the court.

Joint lawsuit of the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and Transparency International – Georgia was lodged at the Batumi City Court on July 30. Batumi office of the TI-Georgia also appealed to the court. All three organizations believe that Adjara legislative body breached Article 49 Paragraph III of the Election Code by introducing amendments to the law. Para.3, Article 49 of the Election Code prohibits from the day of calling of elections until the sum up of the election results, implementation of such projects not being previously envisaged in the state/local budget, as well as increase of those budgetary programs stipulated by the budget prior to the elections, initiation of unplanned transfers or boosting of planned transfers in the local budget.  Suitor NGOs request to halt already allocated expenses.

Gia Kartsivadze, head of GYLA’s Batumi office said: “It is useless to file this lawsuit now. After the Adjara Supreme Council amended the budget, amendments were introduced to the Election Law too and what we protested is no longer a law violation now. The amendments significantly narrow the scope of the provision and it would apply to the period 60 days before the elections.”

Although election laws prescribe short timeframe for litigation of election disputes, Batumi City Court has not yet started examining the complaint. Gia Kartsivadze told humanrights.ge that the organization had already prepared the lawsuit but they did not send it to the court because of recent amendments to the election law.

On its official website, GYLA published a statement about negative aspects of the introduced amendments to the election law (gyla.ge/eng/news?info=1672): “Regrattably, the foregoing initiative is likely to result in the increase of spending state resources, similar to the foregoing case of Adjara A/R budget. Similar trends have been evidenced in some municipalities,” the statement reads.