Georgian opposition starts collecting signatures to change election system

Today, over 20 opposition parties have started to collect signatures under a petition to completely abandon the mixed proportional majority system in favour of the proportional system at the 2020 parliamentary elections. Opposition members explain their petition by the fact that under the current proportional majority system, the ruling party gains most of the mandates in the parliament.

"The Constitution itself requires that elections should be held under the proportional system, but for some reason, the ruling party holds the following elections under the mixed proportional majority system," said former Deputy Justice Minister Alexander Baramidze, one of the leaders of the opposition "Free Democrats" Party, on the air of the "Rustavi-2" TV Channel, watched by the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The legislative change is initiated by over 20 parties. On February 27, they received in the Georgian parliament special forms for collecting signatures, members of the parties told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

At the first stage, the opposition intends to collect 200,000 signatures in order to submit them to the parliament and request to change the system by 2020, and not by 2024, as recorded in the law adopted at the initiative of the ruling "Georgian Dream" Party. Then the opposition is going to continue collecting signatures up to one million under the petition to cancel the majority elections, and that will raise the question of amending the Constitution, the "News-Georgia" reports.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 28, 2019 at 12:56 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.