Leading local NGOs are refusing to participate in the competition commission, underway at the Presidential Administration, set up for selecting CEC chairperson and members.

Accordingly, NGOs are not represented at today's interview with the candidates, which has been going on in the Presidential Administration since the morning.

As Nika Simonishvili, chairman of the Young Lawyers' Association, told InterPressNews about the reasons for the decision, the legislative procedures are focused not on consensus and high political and public credibility, but on a simple majority decision. He says the NGOs did not see the point of their participation in such an unhealthy process.

Simonishvili said that four organizations from five non-governmental organizations refused to participate in the process of selecting candidates.

"We participated last time, but we do not participate this time, for several reasons. The experience of the previous year has shown us that participating in a commission formed in the same way as the previous year and based on the same principle did not make sense, so much so that I personally had the impression that the majority of the commission members acted in agreement, supporting the agreed candidates. Thus it simply made no sense to participate in that commission.

Secondly, of course, the rule of staffing the commission is not correct in general, the selection commission should not be staffed according to this rule, we had remarks about this in the legislative process at that time. The fact that the staffing rule was not correct and proper was also revealed by the way the final decision was made at the previous time, of course, all this was influenced by the wrong rule, which is regulated by law.

The next issue that we must take into account is that the Parliament has changed the legislation that regulates the procedure for electing the CEC chairperson and professional members and has simplified the issue of electing the CEC chairperson and professional members by a simple majority. With this simplified rule, the parliament and the majority Georgian Dream, in fact, appoint professional members once every 6 months and are not focused on consensus decision-making. Of course, a member elected once in 6 months will always depend on the good will of the government, the political will, that after 6 months s/he will be re-elected and appointed to the relevant position.

The rule of election is so simplistic, it is directly aimed at the fact that they were appointed for a term of 6 months, that when they are not guaranteed to hold this position and are appointed for a short term, they will depend on the political will of the government.

Of the five members of the commission who represented the NGOs, four refused. The previous time we and IDFI were members, they also refused.

ISFED and TI also refused. Multinational Georgia was a member of the commission the previous time and they joined the commission again. As far as I know, there were other offers for other non-governmental organizations and most of them refused," Nika Simonishvili said.

source: IPN