PACE Monitors Note ‘Full Lack of Trust’ Among Parties
Monitors from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), who just completed a two-day fact-finding visit to Georgia, have noted “a full lack of trust” between the opposition and the authorities, as was the case prior to the presidential election in January.
Speaking at a news conference on March 27, Matyas Eorsi, co-rapporteur for the PACE Monitoring Committee, said: “We basically could not find any major issue in which the government party and the opposition parties would agree.”
“Comparing the current situation with the situation before the presidential elections we have seen a number of issues where there are changes and other issues where there are no changes at all,” he said. “There are no changes – and we find this is being the most devastating for Georgian democracy – full lack of trust and confidence among political players.”
He called on the Georgian authorities to “double efforts” to investigate all types of electoral violations “deeply and transparently.” He said that law enforcement agencies normally cite “lack of proper evidence” for their failure to investigate election fraud allegations. “Then we listen to the public defender and we hear that there is evidence,” he added. “Of course we do not know what is the truth. What we know, however, is that the government should double its efforts to do those investigations.”
He welcomed the decision to lower the electoral threshold from 7 to 5% and also noted that procedures for filing election complaints had been simplified, although he added that a problem remained vis-a-vis the deadlines for filing complaints.
