Opposition Lays Out Electoral System Reform Priorities

Amendments to the election code, laid out by the alliance of New Rights and Republican parties, were met mainly positively by other opposition parities in and outside the parliament. And the ruling party lawmakers said they were ready to engage in dialogue with the opposition on the matter.

Distribution of Parliamentary Seats

One of the key aspects of the proposal is to change the current system of electing the legislative body, wherein half of the lawmakers in the 150-seat parliament are elected through the majoritarian system in 75 single-mandate constituencies and another half – through the party-list, proportional system.

The New Rights and Republicans have instead offered to elect 100 lawmakers through the proportional, party-list system and remaining 50 – through so called “regional proportional system”

Electing majoritarian MPs through ‘regional proportional lists’ allows parties or election blocs to nominate several candidates in each constituency (the number of seats available would depend on the size of the constituency). Seats in the parliament, under this system, would be allocated proportionally, based on the votes received by parties in a particular constituency. The proposal also envisages leaving five majoritarian seats allocated for Abkhazia (three seats) and for South Ossetia (two seats) vacant before the restoration of the territorial integrity.  This proposal was pushed by the opposition before the May 21, 2008 parliamentary elections, but at that time it was rejected by the ruling National Movement party.

New Arbitration System

The proposal offers setting up of a nine-member arbitration board, which will deal with the election complaints filed by the parties.

The board, according to the proposal, should be composed by “highly respected and trusted” individuals, including from the international organizations.

Such board, if established, will deprive the Central Election Commission (CEC) authority to address the electoral complaints.

According to the proposal the decision of the board should be final, which can not be appealed to the common courts. Only the decision related with the final vote tally can be appealed to the Constitutional Court, according to the document.

Election Administrations

The New Rights and Republicans have also offered to compose the election administrations of all three levels – precinct election commissions, district election commissions and central election commission – by representatives of the political parties based on “a parity principle.”

The proposal, however, does not specify an exact mechanism of composition.

Other Technical Aspects

The proposal envisages installing CCTV cameras at all the polling stations and full and unrestricted access to video recordings.

According to the current rule political parties or election observers can only request access to 15-minute portion of the video recordings.

The New Rights and Republicans have also offered to change the current identity cards with magnetic stripe cards to prevent multiple voting through faked IDs.

The opposition parties have been alleging prior to the May 21, 2008 parliamentary elections and on election day that fake IDs had been issued by the authorities to allow multiple voting. The opposition also claimed that after checking the voter list provided by the CEC, it found cases where more than a dozen and in some cases up to 80 voters were registered in one and the same apartment. International observation mission under the OSCE aegis said in its report that it could “substantiate some of these cases.”

The proposal has been sent to other political parties, including to the ruling party and international organizations.

“It means that we are ready to launch a dialogue with everyone” on the matter, including with the ruling party, Davit Berdzenishvili of the Republican Party said at a press conference on February 4.

Mamuka Katsitadze of the New Rights party said that adoption of new election rules was essential for holding early presidential and parliamentary elections.
 
MP from the ruling party, Akaki Minashvili, said on February 4, that the ruling party was open for a dialogue on the matter. He, however, also said that the next elections were only scheduled for 2010 – local self-governance elections, ruling out holding of early polls this year.

In mid-December, Davit Bakradze, the Parliamentary Chairman, announced about the plans to set up an all-inclusive special group to work on the amendments into the election code. The group has not been established yet.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)