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Front News Georgia
Transparency International Georgia (TI Georgia) has released its interim report for the October 2 municipal elections in which it says that misuse of administrative resources during electoral processes remains a problem.
TI Georgia says that the observation took place from June 1 to September 25, 2021.
“Ineffective investigation of alleged cases of intimidation and dismissal of the employees of budgetary organizations on political grounds, harassment of opposition party candidates as well as the politicization of public institutions and a large-scale mobilisation of public sector employees for election campaign purposes by the ruling party, the use of budget programmes for parochial party interests and other flawed trends are the key challenges to a fair election environment,” said TI Georgia.
It says that in August and September they identified 17 alleged cases of political harassment.
TI Georgia says that since the beginning of September, once the deadline of registering electoral subjects had passed, many opposition political parties talked about the alleged cases of pressure exerted by the State Security Service and other agencies on those in their party lists and candidates in single-mandate districts.
“The main goal of such pressure, in their opinion, was to decrease competition for the ruling party. The party For Georgia was notable for a particularly high number of such reports: according to its representatives, 22 instances of this kind occurred in Aspindza, Akhalkalaki, Akhmeta, Akhaltsikhe, Marneuli, Kazbegi, Khelvachauri, Tetritskaro, Tsalenjikha, Tkibuli, Ninotsminda, Adigeni, Kaspi and Tskaltubo,” TI Georgia said.
The report says that in August, there were reports that the government representative in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region and the regional heads of the State Security Service and the Investigation Service of the Ministry of Finance allegedly tasked local businesspeople to make financial contributions to the ruling party.
“When the reports were checked, it turned out that, in the period between 2 and 16 August, 87 individuals and five companies from Samtskhe-Javakheti made donations to the ruling party amounting to the total of GEL 714,000. This amount of donations made from this single geographic area in such a short time period is quite unusual and may be considered to be indirect evidence backing the aforementioned reports,” TI Georgia says.
TI Georgia says that during the reporting period, they identified 10 state programmes and initiatives which may be deemed to be electorally-motivated expenses.
