The Parliament deliberates the draft law that harms the pre-election environment

Prior to the parliamentary election of 2020, the Parliament is considering the draft law initiated by the majority parliamentarians, that is to write off the financial obligations that was due to be paid for the state budget. According to the package of the draft laws, a state pension, a living allowance, a social package, and compensation overly paid from the state budget to citizens by July 20 of 2020, are to be written off. By the proposed changes the citizens will no longer be obligated to repay the amounts paid to them without a legal ground from the state budget.

The draft law contradicts the electoral legislation in force. According to the Election Code of Georgia, prior to election it is prohibited to determine those social allowances (such as living allowance, social relief, etc.) and/or any other concession that has not been determined by the Georgian legislation no less than 60 days prior to election day. It is noteworthy that on August 31, the Parliamentary bureau voted to adopt the draft law in an accelerated way, that is to say, it will be adopted prior to election and be entered into force right after its promulgation.

Poverty in Georgia remains a significant challenge for decades. It has worsened more by the economic effects of the spread of the new Corona Virus that became much more pervasive since April of 2020. However, the present situation should never be abused by the ruling party for the pre-election purposes. During the current pre-election period, ensuring the equal and fair election environment is crucial. Therefore, the Parliament ought to have adopted those changes during its Spring and Extraordinary Sessions. As for the obligations caused over the months of June and July of 2020, should be left for the upcoming Parliament to deliberate.

Based on the information provided by the LEPL Social Service Agency, above mentioned concession applies to more than 2000 people who benefits from sundry social reliefs (1594 pensioners; 230 beneficiaries; and recipients of compensation) and 3478 socially disadvantaged families. In total, 1 541 128 GEL will not be repaid to the state budget. According to the explanatory note of the draft law, the amount to be repaid by the beneficiaries to the state budget is a time consuming process. Therefore, it is absolutely unjustified as to why it is necessary for such concession to be adopted by the law during the pre-election period.

The aforementioned changes proposed by the draft law can be qualified as the use of administrative resources for the pre-election purposes. Prior to election, over 1,5 million GEL that was to be paid to the state budget will be written off from the thousands of people.

Writing off the debt is not novelty for the Georgian pre-election environment. Prior to the Presidential election in 2018, the initiative proposed by the ruling party to write off the debts by the financial institutions from 600 000 people, according to the OSCE/ODIHR report of the 2018 Presidential Election, was evaluated as the incident that blurred the line between the state and the ruling party.[1] It highlights that the malpractice harms pre-election environment and puts the political parties participating in the election in unequal and unfair position.

“Democracy Index _ Georgia” calls on the Parliament to stop considering the aforementioned draft law until the end of the pre-election period and to provide the liberal and fair environment for the Parliamentary election of 2020.

[1] https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/9/4/412724_2.pdf, p.2