Surprises of the 2014 municipal elections

An election candidate who was formally removed from the election list two days before Sunday’s self-government elections, but did not have his name removed from official voting papers as there was no time to reprint the official voting papers, has won a regional election.

This was one of two surprising facts to emerge from the self-government elections.

Georgian Dream candidate Merab Tofchishvili had withdrawn from challenging the post of Marneuli district local governor – Gamgebeli but still gained 52.48 percent of total votes in yesterday’s municipal elections, the Central Election Commission (CEC) preliminary results revealed.

Today the CEC said Tofchishvili’s victory was legitimate and he could take the post if he wanted to, despite earlier withdrawing from the race.

Tofchishvili said he would not disappoint his electorate and would take the Gamgebeli post. He said he was not entirely surprised by the result.

"Marneuli locals proved that they made their choice based on work that had been done, not based on religious or ethnical grounds,” Tofchishvili said.

"I received not only Georgians’, but Azerbaijanis and Armenians votes too. They put their trust in me and I do not know how to express my gratitude.”

Marneuli is a small town in the Kvemo Kartli region in southern Georgia that borders neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia. The region is mainly inhabited by ethnical minorities of Georgia.

In a bid to demonstrate that Georgian Dream had the interests of the state at heart, the ruling coalition tried to create a precedent of removing electoral candidate in favour of opposition candidates.

The political council of the Georgian Dream ruling coalition advised Tofchishvili to withdraw his candidacy in favour of two Azerbaijani opposition candidates on June 13.

At the time, the Georgian Dream council said this would prevent opposition parties’ provoking a potential situation of ethnic controversy and avoid additional escalation of the situation in the district.

Before Tofchishvili withdrew his candidacy, the Marneuli district was the subject of another political dispute. In early June Tbilisi City Court decided to reinstate opposition United National Movement (UNM) candidate Akmamed Imamquliyev after the CEC cancelled his registration for failing to adhere to election rules.

The opposition party candidate’s bid to run in the election was plagued with legal hurdles related to two-year residency requirements. The District Election Commission looked into his case and advised the CEC to revoke Imamquliyev’s eligibility to run for the head of Marneuli municipality.

At the time UNM blamed authorities for unlawfully revoking Imamquliyev’s candidacy and claimed current leaders wanted its candidate to be removed from the race. Imamquliyev appealed the decision to the CEC but on June 7 his name was removed from the election registration form.

UNM then appealed to Tbilisi City Court and won the case.

Another interesting fact that no one expected of the 2014 municipal elections was that in three self-governor cities, the second highest ranking party did not gain enough votes to be eligible to take part in the second round vote, according to preliminary results.

The ruling Georgian Dream coalition and the UNM opposition party were believed to be the top players in the elections. At all polling stations, GD candidates ranked first and UNM politicians ranked second. However, in Mtskheta, Gori and Foti, initial results were different.

In Mtskheta, the GD candidate gained the highest result (33.64 percent) while UNM ranked last with 1.94 percent.

In Gori, GD received 40.78 percent and ranked first while UNM placed third with 14.52 percent of votes.

In Foti, the GD candidate gained 45.55 percent of votes while UNM candidate gained 19.36 percent and ranked third.

The CEC said these results were not final.

Click here to see an interactive map with latest data about the local election results on Agenda.ge.