Celebration of victory through the gun shot
By Tatia Megeneishvili
Tuesday, July 1
Victory at the N32 Anaklia polling station was followed by gun shots from the deputy chief of the Zugdidi Georgian Dream local organization on June 29.
According to an eye-witness, Valiko Absandze fired several time in the air. He was soon detained by the police for his chosen method of celebration along with some of his companions.
The chief of the same headquarter, Lasha Gvasalia, denied the accusation and said that the suspects only fired rifles into the air to celebrate the victory.
The GD won elections against the United National Movement (UNM) at the Anaklia polling station. However, Anaklia was not the only polling station where the coalition won.
The chairperson of the Central Election Commission(CEC) of Georgia, Tamar Zhvania has already summed up the results of the repeat elections conducted at 14 polling stations of the nine election districts of Georgia on June 29th. Zhvania stressed that the polls were won by the candidates of the ruling party Georgian Dream in all districts except Khoni, where the candidate of the United National Movement gained the majority of votes.
According to the CEC, the highest voter turnout was reported in Khoni and the lowest was in Dusheti.
The reason for conducting the repeated voting at various polling stations was that certain violations had been detected during the first round of elections at the stations.
The CEC spokesperson, Eka Azarashvili, said that the elections were held in a peaceful environment, without any major violations. She admitted that most of the minor violations were procedural and were eradicated immediately.
International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), an election observer group, stated that there were only “minor technical flaws”.
According to the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) the violations mostly had a technical nature and GYLA has submitted 2 complaints and 8 logbook remarks on those violations. “In all eight cases the remarks of GYLA observers were taken into consideration, so those complaints were not filed,” the statement reads.
The complaints and the remarks were mainly related to the following violations: improper set-up of the polling station (4 cases), violations relating to casting of lots (1 case), presence of unauthorized person at the polling station (1 case), problems relating to the voting through the mobile ballot box (1 case), and improper implementation of the duties of the commission members (2 cases).
A total of 13,956 voters are registered at the polling stations where the revote was held. 5,112 of them (36,63%) turned out at the polling stations on June 29.
