Electoral Reform Working Group Meeting

The ruling party is pushing for a winner-take-all system for direct election of Tbilisi mayor, which is unacceptable for the opposition, Davit Berdzenishvili of the Republican Party, part of Alliance for Georgia, told Rustavi 2 TV.

He also said after a meeting of an inter-party working group on electoral reform on October 20, that the ruling party was against of direct election of mayors in four major cities – Kutaisi, Batumi, Rustavi and Poti.

MP Pavle Kublashvili of the ruling party declined to comment on the substance of discussions, citing a pre-agreed rules of the format outlined in the group’s code of conduct according to which “any comments made during the sessions are to be treated as private”.

MP Kublashvili, however, said discussions would continue and added: “I hope there will be some degree of consensus within the group over these issues.”

After joining the working group in September, Alliance for Georgia offered the participants an outline of proposals on electoral reform, which was also endorsed by four other opposition parties, which are not participating in the inter-party working group.

The proposal, among other issues, calls for direct election of mayors in five major cities under the system wherein a candidate will be declared a winner if garnering 50% plus one vote, otherwise a runoff should be held.

The ruling party has reiterated for number of times that a mayor in Tbilisi would be elected directly and not by an elected City Council as the current rule envisages.

Although President Saakashvili pledged in his address at the UN General Assembly session in September that “all mayors” in other four cities would also be elected directly, the issue still remains undecided.
 
Direct election of mayors in all five major cities is also supported by Christian-Democratic Movement (CDM), a leading party in the parliamentary minority group, which is also a participant of the working group on electoral reforms. CDM launched a campaign of collecting signatures of voters in Batumi, Poti, Rustavi and Kutaisi calling for direct mayoral elections in these cities.

President Saakashvili offered to hold local elections on May 30, 2010, but a formal decision setting the date has yet to be taken.

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