Parties Seem to Be Near Consensus Over CEC

(Tbilisi. May 3, 2003. Civil Georgia) – Representatives of the leading political parties agreed on May 3 that the new Central Election Commission will be composed with the both, as representatives of the President as well as representatives of the political parties.

“I think we will reach an agreement. We are ready for the compromise,” Avtandil Jorbenadze, the State Minister and one of the leaders of the Presidential-backed election alliance told the reporters after the meeting of the political parties held in the office of the Industrialists party.

“The President is ready to change his project on composition of the CEC. I was extremely against of this project,” Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze told the reporters after the meeting.

A project of amendments to the Election Code, submitted to the Parliament under the President’s initiative, suggests creating 11-member commission, 9 of which would be nominated by the President for approval by the Parliament.

Two other candidates are to be proposed by the authorities of the Abkhaz (in exile) and Adjarian Authonomous Republics. At the same time, none of the CEC members shall be a representative of a political party.

The opposition demanded further discussion of the project, adopted by the Parliament with the first hearings last year. This project considers composition of CEC by representatives of the political parties, which have cleared the 4% threshold in the Parliamentary (1999) and local self-governance (2002) elections.

In this case the opposition parties would gain a minor, but still important quantitative advantage in CEC, which, of course is not in the government’s interests.

The political parties will meet again on May 5 to discuss other details of the composition of the CEC, which is the key body in the elections.

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