According to Giorgi Sioridze, the opposition deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission, the representative of Lelo, the Government is changing the procedure for electing the chairman and members of the CEC and is in fact carrying out one-party occupation of the Central Election Commission.

As he said at today's briefing, the package of changes will probably be submitted to the Bureau of the Parliament today.

According to him, with the new changes, it will be possible to elect the chairman and members of the CEC with a simple majority for a period of 5 years, thereby ignoring the opinions of the Venice Commission and OSCE/ODIR.

"I have now received the draft package of changes initiated by the ruling party, this draft will be sent to the Bureau of the Parliament. With this package, the Government is adjusting the procedures to itself. They can choose the chairman of the CEC alone, without agreeing it with everyone, and conduct the whole process in an anti-democratic manner, as they wish it! If this draft becomes a law, we will take a very big step backwards. With the new changes, it will be possible to elect the CEC chairman and members by a simple majority, that is, by a single party, and also for a 5-year term. The opinions of the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR are being ignored.

With the new bill, the President is deprived of the prerogative to present to the Parliament the candidates for the chairmanship and membership of the CEC. The Speaker of the Parliament will select the candidates instead of the President. This is an attack on the presidential institution, which is due to the fact that the President did not nominate the candidates that the Government wanted.

Practically the only achievement of the Charles Michel Agreement was the mechanism for electing the CEC chairman and members, which required a qualified majority of the Parliament and was based on consensus and need to hold political consultations between the parties - all this will be canceled by this package! I want to emphasize once again that the adoption of this package will be a very big step backwards in terms of the development of institutional democracy!" - said Giorgi Sioridze.