Ruling party claims NGOs planned to leave Central Election Commission unstaffed

Ruling Georgian Dream party MP Shalva Papuashvili has said that NGOs planned to leave the Central Election Commission (CEC) unstaffed following reforms which saw the resignation of the body’s chair Tamar Zhvania in late June, and to later stack the CEC with its own representatives.

It seems that they agreed on the voting rule and supported only two candidates, who were representatives of their own, non-governmental organisations. This is a direct conflict of interest,” Papuashvili said.

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Papuashvili also noted that the recent comments of the representatives of NGOs directly show ‘inauthentic and coordinated behaviour.’

We heard from non-governmental organizations that the commission may not select candidates at all and if the candidates for the CEC chairmanship and membership could not be selected, only the political party side of the CEC would be staffed from August 1. This means that we would have a CEC with an opposition majority,” said MP Shalva Papuashvili. 

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It is clear that this was coordinated and agreed-upon behaviour, which is disappointing because NGOs seem to be in charge of maintaining the standard in state structures, but they themselves act beyond any standard,” said Papuashvili. 

The process of interviewing candidates for the CEC chairmanship and membership came to an end yesterday. 

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Representatives of the NGO sector did not support the CEC chairmanship candidates. 

The commission has selected and proposed to the president two candidates for the CEC chairmanship and five candidates for membership. 

The president of Georgia must make a decision regarding the candidates within three days and submit two candidates for each vacant position to the parliament.