ECHR Rules Partly in Favor of Labor Party

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said there had been a violation of the Labor Party’s right to stand for election under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which upholds the right to free elections.

The Labor Party was demanding in its case against Georgia in the Strasbourg-based court compensation to the amount of EUR 2 billion for non-pecuniary damages, alleging it was “expelled” from Parliament as a result of electoral irregularities in the March 28, 2004 elections.

In respect of pecuniary damages, the Labor Party claimed compensation to the amount of EUR 138,100 for election campaign expenses and a further EUR 23,300 in legal costs, both in Georgia and Strasbourg.

The ECHR, however, said in its judgment announced on July 8: “The Court held unanimously that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant party, and awarded it 10,043 euros (EUR) for costs and expenses.”

The court said that the exclusion of two electoral districts – Kobuleti and Khulo – in the 2004 parliamentary polls, from the general election process “had failed to comply with a number of rule of law requisites and resulted in what was effectively a disfranchisement of a significant section of the population” – about 60,000 voters.

The political standoff between the central authorities and then Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze prevented the holding of the elections on March 28 in the two electoral districts in the autonomous republic. The vote was rescheduled for April 18, but polling stations failed to open, depriving around 60,000 voters of their right to cast a ballot.

On the same day, April 18, the Georgian Central Election Commission, chaired by Zurab Tchiaberashvili (now Georgia’s envoy to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg), finalized nation-wide election results, disregarding the two districts in Adjara. The Labor Party received 6.01%, while 7% was needed to clear the electoral threshold.

The Labor Party claimed in its case that it was deprived of its chance to win parliamentary seats because the election results were finalized without a vote having been held in the two electoral districts.

The ECHR, however, said in its judgment that “it was not the applicant party’s right to win the repeat parliamentary election which was at stake but its right to stand freely and effectively.”

The Labor Party also complained in its case against some other, what it called, electoral violations. In particular, it challenged the rules on the composition of voter lists and complained that a majority of CEC members were representatives of the ruling party, which, because the CEC took decisions by a majority vote, enabled the CEC to ignore the Labor Party’s numerous protests about electoral irregularities. The ECHR, however, rejected these complaints.