Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association in conjunction with a partner organization, European Human Rights Advocacy Center filed in European Court of Human Rights on behalf of 10 participants of No to Panorama rally. 

We, non-governmental organizations comprising the “No to Phobia!” civil platform, condemn the violent action and Armenophobic attitudes displayed by Tamaz Mechiauri, Chairman of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Parliament of Georgia. We believe that representatives of the authorities have an obligation of high tolerance toward any form of public protest, while their public assessments are an object of public interest, which obligates them to refrain from any such expression that contains xenophobic content.

The following NGOs – International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association and Transparency International – Georgia, - refuse to accept the offer of the Defense Ministry to visit a special electoral precinct few days ahead of the elections. The special electoral precinct has been established to allow military workers to participate in Gamgebeli by-elections scheduled to be held on January 28. 

We issue this statement in reaction to the announcement made by the Prime Minister of Georgia during his meeting with the inter-faction group of the non-parliamentary opposition, according to which a political decision to abolish the so-called “special precincts” has been made. 

We issue this statement in reaction to the new regulations of military voting proposed by the government. We welcome that the draft amendments unveiled by the government abolish the possibility to create special electoral precincts in military units and regulate various matters of military voting in more detail. However, the new regulations substantially fail to remedy the problems in military voting. Military workers who are not registered at their place of deployment will still be able to participate in majoritarian elections, meaning that the risk of manipulating with military votes will remain intact. 

We would like to respond to the remarks made by the Minister of Defense of Georgia to the media on January 27^th, about special electoral precincts. 

Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association is monitoring January 28, 2016 pre-term elections of Gardabani Municipality Gamgebeli. 

Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association is monitoring January 28, 2016 pre-term elections of Gardabani Municipality Gamgebeli. In addition to civilian electoral precincts, GYLA is also monitoring the polling process in Vaziani, at a special polling precinct no.64, where to our knowledge total of 692 voters cast a ballot, including 685 military voters.