Public Movement Multinational Georgia (PMMG) Submitted Recommendations to the Parliament of Georgia with Regard to the Elections Memorandum

Public Movement Multinational Georgia (PMMG) Submitted Recommendations to the Parliament of Georgia with Regard to the Elections Memorandum

Public Movement Multinational Georgia submitted recommendations to the Elections Reform Working Group under the Parliament of Georgia .

Recommendations are developed in a way to address the issues regulated by the political memorandum including electoral system, election administration, electronic voting, election despites, administrative resources, etc.

Recommendations are also related to the issues not covered by the memorandum. Such issues include vote buying and development of the correction protocols. Some other recommendations are also drafted and submitted which, according to PMMG will promote the political representation and participation of ethnic minorities.

PMMG believes, that election administration reform as well as electronic voting are highly important issues aiming the strengthening of public confidence of the election administration as well as the improvement of electoral environment.

However, apart from addressing the underlining issues, state authorities should devote more effort to secure the conduct of pre-election campaign in free and fair environment in order to decrease political polarization as well as prevent the use of administrative resources for election purposes.

To this end, timely, impartial and full investigation and delivery of effective response to the electoral violations such as alleged threat, pressure, physical retaliation as well as vote buying revealed during pre-election period is of utmost importance.

Promotion of wider public engagement in a process of realization of election reform is very important, including with the engagement of international experts. Moreover, securing wider political and public consensus in this process especially regarding the electoral system is also crucial.

In addition, PMMG believes that certain reasonable time frame is necessary to prepare and discuss the issues set out in the memorandum as well as take respective political and administrative decisions. Taken into account the volume of the works timing cannot be sufficient enough to accomplish the underlined task before the 2021 Local Self-Government Elections.