Georgia’s Minister of Justice believes the 2014 municipal elections will be the first local self-government elections where the country’s leaders have not use force on people, candidates or the media.
Three days before the elections, Minister Tea Tsulukiani evaluated the pre-election environment and said things had improved from previous years.
"This is the first elections where freedom of assembly is provided. In instances of separate incidents, police have not beat political activists. On the contrary, police have protected them despite their political affiliation,” Tsulukiani said at a special press conference today.
In her speech Tsulukiani, who is also the chair of the Inter-Agency Commission – a special department of the Ministry of Justice dedicated to ensuring free and fair elections, said voters were confident for the first time that they would not be punished for their free choice.
"I would like to remind candidates that the main instrument of the struggle is peace and the recipe of the victory is political restrain, seriousness, consistency and credibility,” she said.
"The voters don’t support the agitated and aggressive candidates.”
Tsulukiani positively evaluated the Georgian Prosecution’s investigation of 80 cases of alleged oppression against election subjects, during which more than 100 people were interrogated to verify the validity of information.
The Minister said that out of these 80 cases, 76 subjects did not confirm information about revoking candidacy because of political pressure and named other motives such as family-related issues, age, changing of last name and other reasons.
Tsulukiani called on the prosecution to continue work to identify those responsible for threatening calls towards political activists and the owners of those phone numbers.
At today’s media conference Tsulukiani also spoke about "disturbing” facts revealed by the prosecution during the fact-checking process.
"In particular, United National Movement candidate in Ozurgeti, Kakha Kiladze, noted that introducing his candidacy and then removing it was agreed with the UNM in advance, and he did not see anything special in this,” Tsulukiani said.
"I call on the Chief Prosecution to continue looking into this matter and determine whether there had been a planned scenario from UNM by introducing certain candidates and then revoking them and claiming the alleged pressure motive,” she announced.
The Minister also welcomed all media representatives, who were engaged in covering the elections and urged them to report on the elections in a free, fair and responsible way.
"I welcome all media outlets who in a free environment to gain and cover news about political parties and their candidates and give every adult citizen the chance to make an informed choice.”
"I also emphasize that the freedom of expression and freedom of the media is one of the main achievements of Georgian society after the 2012 elections. To maintain this [environment] is and will be the top priority of this Government.”
Tsulukiani condemned aggression by opposition party UNM on the election administration inMarneuli, a municipality in Kvemo Kartli region.
"Ensuring the independence and fairness of the election administration was the main priority of our Government and we have been achieving it since coming to power,” she said.
Tsulukiani said she was confident the elections would go off without a hitch.
"Of course the elections will be conducted in a peaceful environment, after which further multilateral improvement of electoral legislation and corresponding practice will be necessary so that electoral subjects can face even higher degree of equality in terms of political competition, including in the media field,” she said.
"The post-election period will also be peaceful because Georgia has strong institutions, which will not allow any candidate to break the law or any supporter to harm our country’s democratic and civilized future,” the Minister added.