After an extraordinarily lengthy deliberation of nearly 24 hours, the Tbilisi Court of Appeals rejected appeals by the watchdog Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) and the local observer mission My Vote over the alleged violations of ballot secrecy. The Court upheld the official, albeit disputed, results of the October 26 elections.
The GYLA sought to annul the official results from all polling stations across the country where voting was conducted using electronic devices. The watchdog argued that the ballot secrecy had been violated because the paper was so thin that it revealed on the other side, which party a citizen was voting for.
Nona Kurdovanidze, the head of the GYLA, said the decision was not “unexpected” for the plaintiffs, although she remained adamant that the secrecy of the ballot had been violated during the elections.
The Tbilisi Court of Appeals consolidated all complaints from polling stations across eastern Georgia into a one case and ultimately dismissed all 26 cases filed by GYLA and My Vote.
Similarly, the Kutaisi Court of Appeals considered complaints from polling stations in western Georgia but also rejected the GYLA’s claims late last night.
Had the Courts confirmed ballot secrecy violations, the majority of the votes would have been annulled, raising the need to hold new elections. With this ruling, the Tbilisi Court of Appeals also overturned the earlier decision of Tetritskaro City Judge Vladimer Khuchua, who was the only judge to agree with GYLA’s claims and confirm that the secrecy of the ballot had indeed been violated. For his extraordinary move, Khuchua has been targeted by Georgian Dream-affiliated media, anonymous websites and social media accounts as biased and has become the subject of a discrediting campaign.
The unusual length of the hearing in Tbilisi Court of Appeals was also criticized by the GYLA, which said the court had violated the constitutional principle of fair trial, adding that according to the relevant rules of procedure, the decision had to be announced no later than midnight.
After the verdict, the head of GYLA, Kurdovanidze, also said that the judges had not given clarification to their decision.
The hearing was chaired by Judge Davit Akhalbedashvili, with Judges Gocha Didava and Dimitri Gvritishvili as members of the collegium. On November 6, as the court session started the plaintiffs filed a motion to recuse Judge Dimitri Gvritishvili, considered to be one of the most influential judges in the Georgian judiciary, due, as plaintiffs argued, to his negative stance towards the civil society organizations, but the collegium did not grant the motion.
The refusal to recuse the judge also occurred during the hearing at the Kutaisi Court of Appeals, where one of the members of the collegium was Shota Siradze, the father of Vazha Siradze, the Director of the Georgian Patrol Police Department of Interior Ministry and one of the high-ranking officials whose sanction was demanded by the Members of the European Parliament. TI-Georgia sought to have the judge recused, but the court did not grant the request.