Working Group on Electoral Reform Deliberating NGO Recommendations
The Working Group on Electoral Reform, which was set up as a result of a memorandum signed between the Georgian Dream and the Citizens, held another meeting.
The meeting, attended by the representatives of international and non-governmental organizations, discussed the recommendations submitted by the non-governmental sector regarding the draft amendments to the Electoral Code.
As Shalva Papuashvili, the Co-Chair of the Working Group and the First Deputy Chairman of the Education, Science and Culture Committee, stated after the meeting, in fact, there is an absolute agreement on all procedural issues.
"We have absolute agreement on all procedural issues related to election disputes, administrative resources, use of technologies, which we will discuss in more detail later. There are some differing views, for example, on the electoral system - the proportional and majoritarian issues, as well as on the composition of the election administration. We have a reservation that the parties that will enter the Parliament will have the right to appoint their own member, and a critical opinion has been expressed in this regard. This is understandable, because both of these issues are political and a different format is needed to solve it", - Sh. Papuashvili stated.
According to Levan Ioseliani, Co-Chair of the Working Group, Vice-Speaker of the Parliament, the document reflects the result achieved by the opposition during the ongoing negotiations with the participation of the facilitators.
"There is a draft document and there is an initiated document that answers practically all the questions raised by the opposition at that time, and moreover, there are even more articles included in the document now that actually improve the election environment.
We signed a memorandum and set a specific result. This process is ongoing as Committee discussions will begin soon and we have about two months to make this document legal. It is very important that everyone is involved in this process, including those political parties who believe that their interests are not being taken into account to the desirable extent. They themselves must take part in this process and say what they want and what is not provided", - L. Ioseliani remarked.