Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili has challenged the official results of the October 26 parliamentary elections in the country’s Constitutional Court, although she said she does not believe in the independence of the court and therefore does not expect the ruling she is seeking.
“But it should serve as a sign that we have not left any legal dispute in the country without having tried and tested to the end,” she said on November 18, two days after the Central Election Commission (CEC) announced official final results that gave the ruling Georgian Dream party a nearly 54-percent victory.
What is the President’s Complaint About?
In her complaint, the President alleges that two constitutional principles were violated in the October 26 elections (Part 2 of Article 37 of the Georgian Constitution):
- Ballot secrecy – The President supports widespread concerns that ink leaking from the back of the ballot revealed which party a citizen voted for;
- Universal suffrage – The President argues the voting rights of the Georgians living abroad were neglected by the state, preventing them from exercising their right to vote.
The President is seeking a court ruling that the results of Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections are unconstitutional. She filed the complaint with the Constitutional Court on November 19. In parallel, 30 opposition members of the outgoing Parliament filed a separate lawsuit with the Constitutional Court with the same aim of declaring the results unconstitutional.
However, there is little hope that the Constitutional Court, which lacks independence from the GD government, will rule in favor of any of these complaints. In the past, the Court supported the impeachment of President Salome Zurabishvili over her working visits to Europe without government approval; it also refused to temporarily suspend the Foreign Agents Law.
Naive Move or Clever Strategy – What Are the Rules of the Game?
The constitutional lawsuits questioning the election results, experts say, halt the convocation and formation of a new Parliament.
The Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), a local human rights watchdog, explains how: According to the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament, at the first session of a newly elected Parliament, the Temporary Mandate Commission is formed; the Central Election Commission (CEC) provides it with the necessary documents, including materials on the candidates for MPs; the Commission examines the documents and submits the unified list of MPs to the Parliament; the Parliament then recognizes the powers of the MPs.
But, according to the same rules, “the decree of the Parliament recognizing the powers of MPs shall not include the name of a person, the legality of whose election as an MP has been appealed to the Constitutional Court of Georgia.”
The Parliament must have the credentials of at least two-thirds of all 150 MPs, i.e 100 MPs, recognized to begin work. President Salome Zurabishvili’s constitutional lawsuit, which seeks to invalidate the elections, questions the legality of the election of all 150 MPs.
“The Temporary Mandate Commission should not submit the names of the elected MP candidates in the respective decree,” GYLA writes, adding, “In this case, the Parliament will not be able to recognize the authority of at least 100 MPs, which will effectively lead to the suspension of the first session.”
“Therefore, the Georgian Parliament will not be able to recognize the powers of the elected MPs until the litigation in the Constitutional Court is completed,” GYLA concludes.
All Eyes on the Constitutional Court
Before President Zurabishvili announced her intention to challenge the election results in court, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze gave November 25 as the date for the first session of Parliament.
There are five days left before that date, and the Constitutional Court has no chance of deliberating the cases in such a short time, not to mention the fact that the Court has not even ruled on the admissibility of the President’s appeal. But given its lack of independence, it’s not certain that the Constitutional Court will accept the president’s appeal.
Constitutionalist Vakhushti Menabde wrote on social media before CEC announced the final election results that if the elections were appealed to the Constitutional Court, it would delay the process of convening a new parliament by almost a month. “As long as the case is pending before the Constitutional Court, the Parliament cannot assume its full authority. It has no discretion to do so under the rules of procedure,” he said.
Does GD Care?
“Salome Zurabishvili cannot obstruct the work of the newly elected Parliament,” GD Executive Secretary Mamuka Mdinaradze told journalists on November 19, adding, “There is no such norm in legislation.”
However, Mdinaradze’s claim contradicts the country’s Law on the Constitutional Court of Georgia, according to which the President, as well as at least one-fifth of the members of Parliament and the Public Defender are the three subjects who have the right to file a constitutional complaint with the Constitutional Court regarding the constitutionality of the regulatory standards for elections.
Meanwhile, the CEC is going ahead. Today, November 20, it announced that it had issued temporary credentials to the elected MPs in accordance with Article 131 of the Georgian Electoral Code. But the opposition MPs’ complaint also asks the Constitutional Court to suspend this particular article of the Electoral Code because, as Tamar Kordzaia of the UNM, one of the authors of the complaint, said, “all the mandates are controversial.”
“If the Constitutional Court does not immediately schedule the preliminary hearing and does not discuss the complaints, it will violate the Georgian Constitution and the Law on the Constitutional Court of Georgia,” Kordzaia said.
Also Read:
- 07/11/2024 – Tbilisi Court of Appeals Rejects Alleged Breach of Ballot Secrecy, Upholding Official Results
- 30/10/2024 – GYLA Files for Annulment of All Machine-Voting Precinct Results
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
