Georgia’s 38-Day Election Campaign: Enough Time for a Fair Vote?

The Georgian government's decision to hold municipal elections two months earlier than planned has left election observers, political opponents and election administrators scrambling to prepare for the October 5 vote. It has also perpetuated doubts about the government's democratic inclinations.

The political opposition has charged that the date change, announced on August 27, left them with insufficient time for registration of parties and candidates, the organization of campaign blocs and the formulation of campaign strategies. Local administrators and observers have had to re-arrange their planning and training timetable, while international observers have had to significantly scale down their monitoring plans.

Of all these groups, though, the opposition has arguably suffered the least. An interim report from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), published on September 29, stated that no major opposition parties or individuals have been prevented from taking part in the elections.

Opposition disunity does not appear to be closely related to the truncated election timetable. Parties often preferred to talk vaguely about the possibility of a boycott, rather than to formulate a timely campaign strategy. Individual ambitions often prevailed over any sense of collective unity. Former Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili, the one person behind whom the opposition probably could have united, made it clear long ago that she had no interest in running as an opposition bloc candidate. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive.] When the New Conservatives (formerly the New Rights Party) failed to persuade media tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili to run, they opted to drop out of the race altogether, rather than to support another party's candidates.

In terms of administration and oversight, the impact of the date change was more clearly harmful. Eka Siradze-Delaunay, program manager at the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) in Tbilisi, argues that the election date change will have its worst effect on voter lists. While the Central Election Commission (CEC) was trying to check the national voter list door-to-door, "the procedures suggested by the CEC to update the list were completely ignored because of the change of the election date," Siradze-Delaunay said. An ISFED audit of the preliminary election list, released on September 1, found that the list contained a 16 percent error rate. While improvements have been made since, both ISFED and the local non-governmental organization New Generations, New Initiatives (NGNI) have reported lists still contain significant errors.

The abbreviated election timetable has also complicated the assignment and training of election administrators. According to pre-election monitoring by Transparency International (TI), the Central Election Commission had planned extensive training for the 27,045 precinct election commissioners, the largest bloc of election administrators. However, as TI Parliamentary Program Director Nina Khatiskatsi points out, "due to the short window [offered by the new election schedule] many planned trainings were compressed, or did not happen."

The government has often argued that these problems can only ultimately be judged within the context of an independently observed election. Last spring, in a separate interview with this writer, prominent National Movement Party MP Giga Bokeria acknowledged that while there may be concerns about the independence of the Central Election Commission, "the ultimate arbiters of this process will be the international observers," adding that the opposition's complaints "will be forgotten" once "the international observers confirm the independence of the election."

Unfortunately, the capacity for international observation has also been restricted by the earlier election date. "We usually have short-term observers, but this requires time for planning," commented OSCE/ODIHR spokesperson Urdur Gonnar Dottirr. In Georgia's last national elections, in 2004, the OSCE fielded 440 short-term observers; this time there will be none. The OSCE's 19 long-term observers arrived in Georgia only on September 15, with less time than usual for analysis of the campaign. Gonnar Dottir acknowledges that systematic observation of the polling will not be possible. The Council of Europe, for its part, is sending 20 observers for only five days.

This deficit could be significant since many potential abuses pre-date the arrival of the monitors. Since the summer, for example, "Tbilisi News" segments on Georgian television -- paid for with 600,000 lari (about $345,800) from city government funds, according to Transparency International -- have provided "information" on improvements being made to the Georgian capital. While the government argues that these news briefs are part of a civic education campaign, many observers see them as a means of promoting the incumbent Tbilisi city mayor, Gigi Ugulava. Evaluating the role of these information campaigns would usually be part of an international observer's job.

That puts greater pressure on local observers. ISFED and NGNI respectively will field 3,000 and 2,500 local observers working on election day. Transparency International and the Georgian Young Lawyers Association are among those organizations offering long-term analyses of the campaign. If election abuses come to light, these observers, while technically up to the challenge of monitoring, may not carry the same credibility at home and abroad as an international organization would.

Meanwhile, in the absence of a credible explanation for moving up the election date, speculation continues about the government's reasoning. The most common belief is that the government is seeking an overwhelming victory at the polls. As Ghia Nodia, director of the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development, said in an interview with Civil Georgia that the "polls are expected to define the level of their [the government's] popularity."

If this is true, it is an unfortunate precedent. While the government is (and always was) expected to win decisively at the polls, many commentators hoped that the elections would demonstrate its democratic credentials. Unfortunately, the short notice period joins a long list of existing complaints – on topics ranging from media access to the independence of the Central Election Commission -- that the government is attempting to tilt the electoral system in its favor.

As the third anniversary of the 2003 Rose Revolution approaches, this is a worrying sign in a country that has yet to experience a peaceful transfer of power produced via the ballot box.