The Central Election Commission (CEC) plays a crucial role in ensuring that the elections are conducted fairly and in building public confidence in them. Therefore, the undersigned organizations recommend following:
In order to strengthen public trust in the assessment and results of elections, it is crucial that the electoral process take place in a fair and calm environment. The responsibility for this process falls on not only the authorities. Rather, it should be shared among the authorities, the opposition forces, every subject engaged in the process, and society.
To the President of Georgia Mr.
Georgia’s commitments as described in the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan (ENP AP) involve reforms in almost all policy areas. While the government has already achieved tangible results in several policy directions, more action must be taken in many other fields. This report summarizes the government’s achievements and future challenges as perceived by the incumbent government, the opposition and NGO representatives. The report is based solely on information provided by respondents and focuses on policy rather than political issues. The first part of the report outlines success stories as told by the three sides, while the second focuses on policy issues deemed to be in urgent need of attention. The report concludes with a summary of opinions on the government’s achievements and the challenges still to come.
In Georgia the judiciary has traditionally been viewed as one of the most corrupt institutions, best avoided at any opportunity. Hence the need for judicial reform has always ranked high on the government’s agenda, from the Shevardnadze era to the present. Public distrust of the judiciary has
On February 12, 2008, President Saakashvili announced in his annual state of the nation address the introduction of a new co-financed health insurance scheme. The scheme potentially covers the one million people not covered by other free government backed schemes. The package on offer covers basic risks and includes three parts: accidental, urgent and ambulatory services. The premium is GEL 5 a month, of which the state pays GEL 3.35.
State-financed employment programmes have become a new tradition since 2006. While the true scale of the unemployment problem in Georgia is misrepresented by the official statistics, the actual magnitude of unemployment is acknowledged by the heavy focus on the issue, especially at politically sensitive times. Elections have proven an especially effective moment to capture the momentum.
For a country like Georgia with some 50-55% of the population living below the poverty line and some 15% living in conditions of extreme poverty, the need for a coherent and sustainable social security policy is urgent. Georgia inherited the Soviet system of social security, which guaranteed a decent living for pensioners, the unemployed, the disabled, families with many children and people fitting countless other groups. Since the collapse of the USSR, however, Georgia has been unable to afford such lavish social spending, nor has it revised the existing model in a systematic and comprehensive manner.
Two major developments have characterized activity in Georgia’s defence sector since the 2003 Rose Revolution: intensified effort to hasten Georgian accession to NATO and, correspondingly, large-scale infrastructural and long-term planning reforms aimed at meeting NATO entry requirements. Success has been mixed in both areas: in September 2006 the heads of state of twenty-six NATO member countries agreed to the commencement of Intensified Dialogue (ID) with Georgia. While this would seem to be a step in a positive direction, the length of the ID is indefinite and Georgia’s rights and responsibilities during this stage of cooperation are only loosely defined. Georgia’s Ministry of Defence (henceforth MoD) has adopted an elaborate new management scheme for defence planning and oversight, however local defence specialists claim that NATO-specific objectives have been fulfilled on paper only, while substantive reform has yet to be realized. While responsibility for the development and implementation of defence reform lies with the Georgian side primarily, the ambiguity of NATO requirements at stages along the way to full integration has made Georgian compliance and accountability an especially difficult task.
National statistics, among many other policy issues, is given significant attention in the European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plan (section 4.5.5). The ENP AP stipulates that reform of national statistics should take two forms: first, statistical methods that are fully compatible with European