100 observers from the Human Rights Center monitored the elections throughout Georgia, most significantly in Kakheti region – in the villages populated by Azeri minority and Samegrelo region. According to the observers of the Human Rights Center, the most widespread violations and questionable practices observed and documented by them were the following:

  • Presence of law enforcement authorities in official uniforms at the polling stations or near them without any legal justification– in Samegrelo that was especially widespread;
  • Obstruction of election observers, physical pressure, threats or physical abuse against them, in some cases law enforcement authorities were directly involved in that;
  • Presence of unidentifiable people at the polling stations who were freely in contact with commission members, were entering and leaving polling stations freely;
  • Ineligible citizens (minors) or without proper documents were allowed to vote;
  • Lack of Georgian language skills by voters to effectively exercise their constitutional rights;
  • Overcrowding at the polling stations, voters were followed by unidentified people or commission members in the voting cabin, in some cases calling “besh besh” (number 5 – ruling party) to them;
  • Procedural violations during voting and counting procedures (not keeping records book in proper order, not sealing documents, etc.)
  • Technical problems: special tool for marking often out of order or not attended properly, polling station was opened in a highly inappropriate places (animal farm)

Video-recordings about rigged elections and violations presented by the Human Rights Center (please see: http://hridc.tv) attracted the attention of the international organizations and diplomatic corps. After the video-proofs about shameful violations were spread, the Central Election Commission (CEC) ordered the Sagarejo district election commission to discuss those video-recordings. District Election Commission (DEC) decided to annul election results at two polling stations.

Based on the findings of the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) observation mission, ISFED considers that the May 30 Local Elections can be considered valid as demonstrated by the high participation of Georgian citizens. However, number of tendencies observed on the Election Day cast the shadow on positive assessment of the Election Day. These are: Wide-scale agitation by activists of electoral subjects in areas surrounding polling stations; Inadequate qualification of precinct level election administration employees and logistical problems (lack of materials, technical equipment out of order) did not add confidence in the electoral process;
A number of significant violations were observed by ISFED observers, such as observers not allowed in the polling station, the pressure and intimidation of observers, voting with ID cards belonging to others, inflated numbers of voters in the supplemental list and more cast ballot papers than the number of signatures in the voters list. On the Election Day ISFED lodged 46 complaint46 complaints.

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association’s (GYLA) preliminary assessment of the voting and vote count procedures in the 30 May 2010 local elections is limited to the Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Batumi electoral districts where GYLA observers monitored the voting, vote count and tabulation procedures in 200 polling stations. At the same time, GYLA’s 30 mobile groups visited more than half of the polling stations in Tbilisi, Kutaisi and Batumi.
Voters subjected to control while expressing their will: Aside from several exceptions, the voting took place in a generally calm environment on 30 May. However, the control imposed by the ruling party’s activists over the voters’ expression of their will cast a significant shadow over the positive trends that set these elections apart from the 2008 presidential and parliamentary ballots.
On 29 May, Pavle Kublashvili announced on the ruling party’s behalf that, on the Election Day, the National Movement’s activists would record the turnout among the party’s supporters outside the polling stations. On 30 May, in a majority of polling stations in Tbilisi and Batumi, GYLA observers saw groups that monitored the voter turnout in respective precincts. As they themselves said, they recorded the “supporter” turnout in special lists.
The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association believes that the presence of the aforementioned groups outside the polling stations effectively constituted control over the voters’ expression of their will, which contradicts the fundamental principles of free and fair elections.
In addition to that GYLA observed the all the above mentioned violations that other national NGOs has observed.

Monitoring Mission of the OSCE evaluated the municipal elections of May 30, 2010 in Georgia positively. However, they said significant violations were observed and mostly in Kakheti region.
“There were several cases when extra ballot papers were dropped in the ballot boxes. The most violations were observed in Kakheti region. In several cases not every voter was marked; the IDs were not checked; the situation was tense in several polling stations. There were procedural violations when voters were not allowed to make their free choice. The violations were observed during the counting procedures; for example, not everybody in the PS could watch the counting process,” said the spokesperson of the OSCE mission Ian Ashanbasher.

Representative from Norwegian Helsinki Committee and Austrian Helsinki Association were monitoring local elections in Akhalkalaki district, where they received a number of complaints from opposition party representatives relating to threats and pressure against their candidates, observers and PEC members. In particular, the Conservative party (number 7 on the party lists), which was perceived as the main opposition party, presented a number of cases. “While we were unable to investigate all of these cases, the ones we did look into were credible,” say the international observers. (For the details, please see: http://humanrights.ge/index.php?a=article&id=5074&lang=en)

The United States Embassy in Georgia spread a statement on their web-site, which says that the Embassy shares the initial assessment by OSCE/ODIHR and other international monitors and supports their primary conclusions. Georgia’s conduct of these elections marked evident progress over past polls and represents clear improvements toward international standards. Embassy teams observed technical improvements in the administration of the elections on election day, although we also observed irregularities in individual precincts in Kakheti, Kvemo Kartli, Samtskhe-Javakheti and Samegrelo.

For the information, Georgian voters elected 63 municipal councils (sakrebulos) and the mayor of Tbilisi. Gigi Ugulava of the ruling National Movement won the election with 55.2% of votes. His closest rival, leader of Alliance for Georgia Irakli Alasania, received 19.05%.

The ruling National Movement party will have 39 seats in new 50-member Tbilisi City Council with the rest 11 seats distributed among four other parties. The ruling party is also heading to winning majority of seats in rest of 63 councils across the country.

Alliance for Georgia, a four-party coalition, received 17.9% votes and secured 5 seats in the Tbilisi City Council, followed by Christian-Democratic Movement – 12%, translated into 3 seats in the council; National Council, a three-party coalition, has 8.3% and 2 seats and Industrialists Party – 6.3%, which means 1 seat in the Tbilisi City Council. Other nine political parties running for the Tbilisi City Council failed to clear 4% threshold.