DAS BRYZA MEETS WITH CIVIL SOCIETY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TBILISI 000935 SIPDIS DEPT FOR DAS BRYZA, EUR/CARC AND DRL E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/04/2018 TAGS: PREL PGOV PHUM KDEM GG SUBJECT: DAS BRYZA MEETS WITH CIVIL SOCIETY Classified By: Ambassador John F. Tefft, for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) ¶1. (C) Summary. On May 9, EUR DAS Matt Bryza, Ambassador Tefft and EU Representative Peter Semneby met with leading members of Georgian civil society. During a wide ranging lunch discussion, they discussed the upcoming May 21 Parliamentary elections and the current tension in Abkhazia. Much of the discussion focused on the challenges that they government needs to meet in order for the upcoming elections to be free and fair and meet western standards. In general, NGOs noted that progress has been made, since the presidential elections but also noted that significant challenges remain. One of the biggest challenges is a general lack of trust by the people in the institutions of government; however, most NGOs agreed that the opposition remains weak and not a viable alternative to the current leadership. End Summary. ¶2. (C) Eka Siradze of International Society for Free Elections and Democracy (ISFED) spoke about the challenges that remain to prepare for a better election. ISFED will be active in all three phases of the election campaign (pre-election, election day, and post election). They will have 75 observers on the ground on election day and are planning to monitor the post-election period closely with the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) for 48 hours after the election. They identified serious problems that have to ameliorated in order for the parliamentary elections to be significantly improved. Without addressing these challenges a serious lack of trust in the voting process will remain among the electorate - which they fear could lead to civil unrest. In particular, they are concerned by a lack of transparency in the Central Election Commission (CEC),by the decision to not allow the Public Defender to have copies of the videotapes made at polling places in the January election, and by problems that remain in the voters' lists. In fact, the tapes used in the January election will be re-used for the Parliamentary elections, and thus erased - ending any chance of examination. She claimed voter trust is very low because of these problems. ¶3. (C) ISFED has been especially focused on the voters' list, Much progress has been made to improve the list since January, when 80.000 extra voters were registered on election ;day. Of these 80,000 additions, 53,000 were found to be double entries, and some underage citizens were on the list. More sophisticated software is needed to comb the civil registry, and this will be purchased after the election. Many rumors about the voters' lists are still commonly heard, and these rumors are alone a threat to voter trust. ¶4. (C) Giorgi Chkeidze of GYLA spoke next, stating that trust is a very basic problem in Georgian society and is a pre-condition for further democratic development. GYLA is actively involved in all three phases of this election campaign. In the pre-election they drafted an understanding which all parties signed which called for people to work through a standard grievance procedure, and let the system work rather than taking arguments to the streets. Now they are actively investigating accusations of intimidation and pressure, as well as claims of abuse of administrative resources by the government. There are very many claims by the opposition, but in general so far there have been little in the way of concrete examples of intimidation - with the exception of a recent case in which Valeri Giorobiani a UNM candidate was forced to withdraw after an audiotape of him threatening government employees if he did not receive an 80% turnout from their district. On that case, Chkeidze observed that if the government wants to convince the voters of real progress in election reform the Giorgobiani needs to be convicted by the courts and not just withdraw. In other high profile cases, GYLA is also concerned that cases are reported as being "in the courts" but no convictions ever occur. GYLA is also concerned that good amendments were made to the election code that the process was not transparent enough. Public trust has been eroded because the public does not feel that the court system properly evaluated appeals by GYLA and other groups. When all appeals were so quickly rejected after January it eroded their argument that the opposition needs to go to the courts and not the streets. ¶5. (C) Shalva Pickhadze of Georgia for NATO, and an informal advisor to New Rights leader Gamkrelidze, observed that the greatest threat to democracy in Georgia is that the citizens of Tbilisi feel that no legal means can change the situation. He elucidated three major mistakes that the government has recently made which exacerbated this situation: 1. The Parliament is supposed to hear the report of the Public Defender, but they refused to (though the President did). 2. The Public Defender was not allowed to take the election day videotapes out of the CEC offices - so he could not fully TBILISI 00000935 002 OF 003 examine them. 3. The CEC decided to re-use the videotapes used in January, which will erase them and so put the January election beyond re-examination. ¶6. (C) DAS Bryza observed that in spite of this, the most recent polls show that the UNM has gained support in recent days, while the opposition support seems to be largely vanishing. Tamuna Karosanidze of Transparency International (TI) observed that the public has very low confidence in polls, and feels that the recent Rosner poll is flawed because they advise the government. However she did agree that the opposition seems to have lost much of its national following, and that in fact they seem to be self-destructively running many of their strongest candidates against each other in a way that seems to raise the possibility of an even stronger government showing. In general the public seems to be very disappointed with the opposition - especially with Levan Gachechiladze of the UOC who seems to lose support with every new intemperate public statement. ¶7. (C) Konstantine Ionatamishvili of New Generation New Initiatives (NGNI) stated that they will have 1,500 election observers in every region, including the conflict zones and ethnic minority regions. He is confident that the upcoming election will be better than January's election. Problem areas included a lack of responsiveness on the part of the CEC, use of administrative resources by the government, and remaining problems with the voters' list. NGNI is undertaking a Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) with USG support, and he is sure that this will increase voter confidence in the election results. ¶8. (C) Tamuna Karosanidze of TI spoke about the trends that they are seeing in this election. In general, there are some of the same problems that occurred in the last election - but at a much smaller scale, and probably by local leaders rather than being directed by the central government. Thus, some abuse of administrative resources remains but there are now definitions of what can and what can not be done, and there is attention paid by the media and others to potential abuse. In general the state of the media is much better in this election - especially Public Television, which has greatly improved since a new Board (which includes opposition representation) and Director was named. Imedi's absence is a problem, not because they were objective -but because they balanced the non-objective other stations. There needs to be a more professional media in Georgia. ¶9. (C) In a general discussion of the abuse of administrative resources Ambassador Tefft observed that there is a lack of clear definition of what administrative resources can and can not be used - even among western democracies. Thus in some countries candidates can not even be offered police protection. Part of this is the value of incumbency - which is always a part of politics. ¶10. (C) Ambassador Alexander Rondeli of the Georgian Foundation for International and Strategic Studies (GFSIS), observed that in general frustration is wide spread - but tension is less. "There is more fatigue and passivity in the society." The current events in Abkhazia are probably helping the government, but in the end the government will win because the opposition is very weak and is losing what trust they had among the population. He worries that the opposition will lose and try to bring people out on the streets, but is certain that this tactic will also fail. The bottom line is that Georgia "lacks a political culture." November's events showed a lack of trust in the government that might have lead to instability, but now there is stability, unless the government "does something really terrible". ¶11. (C) In discussing the recent events in Abkhazia DAS Bryza outlined what these events mean and what the next steps forward need to be to resolve this conflict and get discussions back on track. The NATO summit in Bucharest was a real triumph but Russia is now reacting to that progress and the recognition of Kosovo. The good news is that the west now clearly sees that Georgia is not being the problem in Abkhazia - that Russia is causing the current problems. The Georgian government has been remarkably restrained, but Russia has demonstrated that they are not acting as facilitators, but as a party to the conflict. It is clear that the friends of Georgia process is not functioning, so DAS Bryza is going to focus on three issues that really matter: the return of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs); the Abkhaz need for physical, political, and cultural security, and an elaboration of the autonomous status of Abkhazia within the state of Georgia. A new forum needs to be built that can allow the proposals made recently by the TBILISI 00000935 003 OF 003 Georgian government to go forward and be discussed - perhaps a forum of Black Sea nations ,the current Group of Friends, the OSCE, EU, UN, and possibly others. CIS peacekeepers are not in Abkhazia to provide protection to IDPs, and Russia should not be in a position to block progress on resolving the conflict by standing in the way of direct Georgian-Abkhaz talks. ¶12. (U) DAS Bryza cleared this cable. TEFFT