Two Parties to Fill Seats in Adjara Parliament

The ruling National Movement Party won most of the seats in the Adjara Autonomous Republic’s legislative body after wining over 78.8% of votes in the November 3 local elections, the Adjara’s central election commission said.

The Christian-Democratic Party has garnered 14.7% of votes. 

None of the four other parties – On Our Own; the Georgian Troupe; Industrialists and the United Communist Party – running in the polls cleared the 5% threshold, needed for endorsing members in the Adjara’s Supreme Council; aggregate votes of those four parties is less than 7%. Voter turnout in Adjara was less than 45%, according to the figures posted on the local election commission’s website.

Most of the opposition parties have boycotted both the Adjara polls and low-key MP by elections which were held on the same day in the Tbilisi’s two single-mandate constituencies. The ruling party has also refused to run in the by-elections in Tbilisi.

According to the Georgian Central Election Commission Guram Chakhvadze of the National-Democratic Party (NDP), who was running in the Tbilisi’s Didube single-mandate constituency and Tamaz Kvachantiradze, a candidate nominated by the Christian-Democratic Party in the Vake single-mandate constituency will fill two vacant seats in the Parliament. These seats were vacant after two leader of New Rights Party Davit Gamkrelidze and Davit Saganelidze from the same party, renounced their MP mandates protesting against, what they called, rigged May 21 parliamentary elections.

As a result of the Tbilisi polls, number of Christian-Democratic Party lawmakers in the Parliament has increased from six to seven. And Guram Chakhvadze will be the first lawmaker endorsed by the National-Democratic Party (NDP) in the Parliament in a decade. NDP was an influential opposition party in 1990s but has lost its powerbase since then. The party has recently joined the Anti-Crisis Council, set up in cooperation with the authorities and also involving parties from the parliamentary minority.

Voter turnout in the Vake district was only 7.6% and in Didube – 11.4%, according to the Central Election Commission. The law does not require any voter turnout threshold to validate the polls.

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