Use of Administrative Resources for Election Campaign, Local Elections 2010

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The overall objective of the project is to promote free and fair elections in Georgia. Specific objectives are: • Raise awareness about the abuse of administrative resources in the run-up to the 2010 local elections • Minimise the misuse of administrative resources in the 2010 local government elections • Improve the knowledge of civil society groups and the CEC of how to monitor and control the use of administrative resources This project will: • raise awareness about the use of administrative resources in elections; • build the knowledge of regional civil society to monitor the misuse of administrative resources; • improve the capacities and institutional knowledge of the CEC in how to prevent and investigate misuse of administrative resources; • and equalise conditions for all election subjects by limiting incumbents’ ability to misuse administrative resources. The main problem in the run-off to all elections in the past years has been the abuse of administrative resources by members of the ruling party and local government officials. Such abuse of administrative resources includes (but is not limited to) pressure on state employees such as civil servants, policemen or teachers to refrain from supporting opposition parties and to support and vote for the ruling party; the use of taxpayer money for electoral campaigning; the use of state employees to support campaign efforts of the ruling party and the use of public funds for goods, vouchers and other gifts in order to rally support for a political party. TI Georgia’s monitoring of administrative resources will focus on five types of hard and soft resources: coercive, regulatory, legislative, institutional and financial. The project will also investigate prominent or specific cases of abuse of media resources.