The Parliamentary Political Group “European Socialists” met with the Candidate for the Chairmanship of the CEC, Giorgi Kalandarishvili to hear his visions and plans on improvement of the electoral process.

As the Chair of the PPG, Pridon Injia stated, the Group considers it inadmissible to elect the CEC Chairs with the term of 6 months in the event if the candidate fails to gain at least 2/3 or the majority of the full composition of the Parliament.

“The Central Election Commission is one of the key institutions in the country to be mandatorily independent and unbiased. We discussed the CEC plans and the survey held by NDI according to which, the trust to CEC has been allegedly decreased. We consider it as one of the indices of the performance of the CEC. At that, we asked the candidate about the reasonability of the fact that if the candidate fails to gain 90 votes of the Parliament, then the Chair will be elected only with 6 months while the Parliament elects the Judges with life-tenure with 76 votes”, - P. Injia stated.

“We will make the decision after the interviewing of all the candidates. A prior let me tell you that we consider it inadmissible that the CEC Chairs are elected with 6 months. Practically, the pre-election hysteria starts every 3 months instead of the concentration of the significant changes to the electoral actions, in fact, we encounter the constant marathon of the election of the Chairs”, - David Zijpimiani stated.

The CEC Chair candidate, Giorgi Kalandarishvili hoped to be a multiparty-approved Chair.

“I was open and intend to be constructive in the meetings and relations concerning not only the election of the CEC Chair but any issue related to the election process and procedures. I heard a constructive criticism about our activity to further improve the administrative process ensuring its higher development and transformation”, - he stated.