Yesterday, Transparency International Georgia launched a new website www.chemikhma.ge [1] to help Georgian citizens determine which political party they should side with in the upcoming 2016 parliamentary elections. By answering 36 public policy questions online, the website users will be able to find how their political positions match each political party. Before developing the website, we sent all thirty-six questions to political parties/their leaders and requested their official answers.     

Yesterday the Chair of the Georgian Republican Party released a statement [2]alleging that the political party questionnaire does not reflect the Republican Party’s actual position on marriage since they support the passage in the Civil Code that presumably defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman. The statement alleged that information about the party’s stance on marriage, as provided in Transparency International – Georgia’s political party was wrong and it did not match the Republican Party’s recent statements.

We state with full responsibility that we received answers to the questions from a leader of the Republican Party (Tamar Kordzaia). She should have known that we expected to receive the Republican Party’s official position about the questions. It is unacceptable to blame us for an apparent miscommunication within the party. We suggest the Republican Party to provide us with their amended responses to the questionnaire. Although nearly 10000 people have already taken the quiz, we are ready to make corresponding changes on the website in the best interests of the public.

In addition, the political party Free Democrats has slightly modified its response to the question about withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. The party contacted us about the issue, citing a technical error on their end. We plan to update the quiz accordingly.   

We apologize to everyone who already took the quiz for changes made due to reasons beyond our control. Both changes will be reflected on the website by the end of today and we recommend that website users to take the updated quiz to recheck how the two parties match their opinions.