Nino Gelashvili
In the village of Iormughanlo in Sagarejo district, which is populated by ethnic Azeri people, the municipal elections were held with mass fabrication and blatant violations. The observers of the Human Rights Center monitored the election process in all 12 polling stations in the village. At the end of the Election Day, commission members and activists of the National Movement increased oppression on the observers and the Center decided to call their observers back till the end of the polling day. Below you can read the journalistic report about the situation in one of the polling stations in Iormughanlo village.
In the Iormughanlo polling station # 46 in Sagarejo election district # 11 the elections were carried out with violations. The PS was opened at 8:00 am. At that moment, the record book did not provide information about the results of the ballot on sharing the functions between commission members; the demonstration protocol was filled in incompletely; the instruction of filling in the ballot paper was not put up in the building; the Xerox apparatus was not taken out from the box and the Human Rights Center filed a complaint about these violations.
800 voters were registered in the district; however, the PS election commission had received only 700 ballot papers in Georgian language. Most part of the locals cannot read Georgian. Consequently, other people accompanied the voters into the booth; as a rule, those people indicated for which number to mark. There were cases when observer accompanied the voter into the booth. Second person often accompanied a voter into the booth because of bad eyesight.
There were 6 observers in the polling station from the accredited organizations: Society “Batumeli,” youth movement “Our Generation,” “Alliance of Public Initiatives,” “Center of Democracy” and the Human Rights Center. Except the observer of the Human Rights Center none of the above-mentioned observers stayed in the polling station for a long time and monitored the process attentively. It is quite natural that they did not make any remarks regarding the violations. At the PS, the voters were permanently suggested to mark number 5 on the ballot papers; even commission members did it but after the observer made a remark, they did not do it again.
Commission members did not complain about the suggestions of other people to mark number five. 6 out of 13 commission members were from the opposition parties – “Industry Will Save Georgia,” “By Ourselves,” “Conservative Party,” “Republic Party,” “Christian-Democrat Movement,” and Labor Party. When I asked the representative of the Conservative Party why he did not react on the violations, he replied – you have already complained, what should I say?
Many people tried to vote without IDs. We also observed the attempts of various people to vote by the copies of IDs or soviet passports. After our remarks, those ballot papers were annulled. The secretary cut the corners.
The Human Rights Center observed that underage Mahir Gajiev voted in the presence of other person. The Center filed a complaint regarding this. In one case, we requested a young person to provide an ID when he received a ballot paper; he got confused on our request and the registrar shouted at him not to show the ID to us and leave the room. Other commission members also assisted him to run away. The young boy signed the election list with the name of Majit Melikov, born on February 1, 1988. Very often the registrar did not mark the people before our remarks.
There were 2 registration tables and 2 booths in the polling station. Several commission members did not have any functions in the elections.
The first voter arrived at the PS at 8:06 am; by 12:00 pm, 170 people had voted; by 5:00 pm – 300 voters. There was only one complaint (of the Human Rights Center) registered in the record book.
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