Strasbourg rules Labor’s election rights violated

The Georgian government violated the Labor Party’s right to stand in the 2004 parliamentary elections, the European Court of Human Rights said on July 8.

But the court turned down the party’s demands for damages and dismissed a number of other complaints the party had.

Labor members said they won’t comment on the verdict until next week.

The Labor Party claimed in its case that it was deprived of its chance to win parliamentary seats because the election results were finalized without a vote having been held in the two electoral districts.

Squabbling between then-Adjaran leader Aslan Abashidze and Tbilisi meant closed polling stations kept 60 000 voters from the ballot box.

The court agreed that Georgia’s Central Election Commission had not dealt with the two districts “in a transparent and consistent manner.”

“The exclusion of those two districts from the general election process had failed to comply with a number of rule of law requisites and resulted in what was effectively a disfranchisement of a significant section of the population,” the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) wrote.

“There had accordingly been a violation of the [Labor Party’s] right to stand for [election.]”

The Labor Party ultimately won just over six percent of the vote in that year’s elections, not enough to clear the seven percent vote threshold needed to take seats in parliament.

The party had sought EUR 235 000 in compensation for material damage and a further EUR 2 billion in non-pecuniary losses, but the court decided that would have been excessive.

“The Court held unanimously that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant party, and awarded it [EUR] 10 043 for costs and expenses,” the ECHR said.

The ECHR also rejected a number of other complaints, including that most members on election commissions were ruling party representatives. The court found there was no proof of election commission fraud that damaged Labor’s interests.

Some Georgian analysts and lawyers say this achievement has crucial importance not only for Labor, but also for Georgian state and courts.

“To say nothing further, it is very important as it confirms that those elections were conducted with irregularities. This case has no precedent in Georgia,” lawyer Soso Baratashivili said.

But Kakha Sopromadze, a lawyer who is also a member of the Free Elections NGO, said the only real impact of the ruling is financial.

“This gives some benefits to Labor, but no one will answer for it. The only result will be financial compensation,” he said.