More signatures than demanded
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Monday, September 4
An independent mayoral candidate for Tbilisi Mayor’s post, Aleko Elisashvili, who had accused the ruling party and Georgia’s Central Election Commission of attempting to suppress him, has presented even more signatures than was demanded by the Election Commission to participate in the mayoral election on October 21.
Elisashvili presented 19, 576 signatures of voters to the Central Election Commission, while only a minimum of 9,587 signatures was required for participation.
The independent candidate was given a week’s period to collect the signatures.
Now the Central Election Commission will check how valid the signatures are and make a decision over Elisashvili only afterwards.
In a previous statement, Elisashvili claimed the Georgian Dream ruling party “is spending hundreds of dollars” to affiliate him with other parties and damage his reputation.
Elisashvili made his comments after the release of a video on several Facebook pages, in which some people dressed in United National Movement uniforms were seen collecting signatures for him.
Elisashvili claimed the Georgian Dream party was behind the video and they were trying to link him with a party which was not voted for by the people in 2012 after its nine years in power, due to scandalous torture videos in prison and allegations of corruption.
“They are spending hundreds of dollars to discredit me when they must spend that money on poor people,” Elisashvili said.
He demanded that the police investigate the video and vowed he would have collected even more signatures than it was required for his participation if he had had more than a week.
