CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 8 juillet 2008

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s40F41F73 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s6B505E72 { margin:0pt; padding-left:0pt } .s1C7BEF1E { margin-left:28.52pt; padding-left:7.48pt; font-family:serif } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s3DC36BA9 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS   516 8.7.2008   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT THE GEORGIAN LABOUR PARTY v. GEORGIA   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of The Georgian Labour Party v. Georgia (application no. 9103/04).   The Court held:   unanimously, that the applicant party could claim to be a “victim” under Article   34 (right of individual petition) of alleged violations of Article   3 of Protocol No.   1 of the European Convention on Human Rights; unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 (right to free elections) to the Convention on account of the introduction on 27   February 2004 of a new system of voter registration for the repeat parliamentary election of 28   March 2004; by five votes to two, that there had been no violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 on account of the composition of the electoral commissions at the relevant time; unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 on account of the disfranchisement of the Khulo and Kobuleti voters; and, unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), taken in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 .   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction), the Court held unanimously that the finding of a violation constituted in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant party, and awarded it 10,043   euros   (EUR) for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in English.)   1.     Principal facts   The Georgian Labour Party is a political party based in Tbilisi.   On 2 November 2003 a general parliamentary election was held in Georgia. Its outcome was to be decided according to two voting systems, majority voting and proportional representation. The Georgian Labour Party obtained 12.04% of the votes cast under proportional representation, which corresponded to 20 of the 150 seats in Parliament reserved for candidates from party lists.   Demonstrators protesting that the elections had been rigged and calling for the resignation of Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze disrupted the newly-elected Parliament’s first session on 22   November 2003 (the so-called “Rose Revolution”). President Shevardnadze resigned and the Supreme Court of Georgia annulled the proportional representation results of the general election. It was subsequently decided to hold a presidential election on 4   January 2004 and a re-run of the parliamentary election was ultimately scheduled for 28   March 2004.   The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) adopted a number of decrees in December 2003 requiring voters to go to electoral precincts and fill out special forms in order to vote in the presidential election. The Georgian Labour Party and other opposition parties unsuccessfully challenged the lawfulness of those rules in court. The Georgian Labour Party fielded no candidate in the presidential election. The applicant party applied to the Supreme Court to have the election results annulled, but in vain.   For the parliamentary election, the CEC adopted another decree requiring electoral precincts to publish preliminary lists of voters and obliging voters to go there to check that their names were on the lists and make a request for any correction.   According to the applicant party, on the eve of the parliamentary election, the new President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, told the media that he would not allow the Labour Party to be included in the new Parliament.   Following various complaints filed with the CEC about voting irregularities in the general election on 28 March in the Kobuleti and Khulo electoral districts in the Autonomous Republic of Ajaria, the CEC annulled the results for those two districts by an Ordinance of 2   April 2004. They gave no relevant and sufficient reasons for that decision. The CEC set 18   April 2004 as the date for a new vote. On the day, however, the polling stations in the Khulo and Kobuleti districts failed to open, which deprived around 60,000 people of their vote.   The same day, the CEC announced the results of the 28   March election; 1,498,012   votes had been cast and the applicant party had received 6.01% of the vote, which was not enough to clear the 7% threshold needed to obtain seats in Parliament.   The applicant’s representative, as one of the 15   members of the CEC, had objected to the finalisation of the election results, arguing that the CEC could not lawfully end a national election without first having held an election in the Khulo and Kobuleti districts. The CEC chairperson had replied that the fact that the polling stations had not opened in those districts was the fault of the local authorities. The CEC accepted the election results by a majority vote.   The applicant party appealed unsuccessfully to the Supreme Court. Constitutional proceedings brought by the chairperson of the applicant party were also unsuccessful.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 16   December 2003 and declared partly admissible on 22   May 2007. A hearing on the merits took place in public in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, on 4   September 2007.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Françoise Tulkens (Belgian), President , Ireneu Cabral Barreto (Portuguese), Rıza Türmen (Turkish), Mindia Ugrekhelidze (Georgian), Vladimiro Zagrebelsky (Italian), Antonella Mularoni (San Marinese), Dragoljub Popović (Serbian), judges , and also Sally Dollé , Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaints   The applicant party complained about the conduct of the parliamentary election on 28   March 2004, relying on Article   3 of Protocol No.   1. In particular, it challenged the rules on the composition of electoral rolls. It also complained that a majority of CEC members were representatives of the ruling political forces and that the CEC took decisions by a majority vote enabling it to ignore the Georgian Labour Party’s numerous protests about electoral irregularities. The applicant party further complained that it was deprived of its chance to win parliamentary seats because the general election results were finalised without a vote having been held in two electoral districts.   Decision of the Court   The Court found that, in the present case, the applicant, as a political party, could validly claim victim status for the purposes of Article   34.   Article 3 of Protocol No. 1   Concerning the new system of voter registration   The Court considered that the proper management of electoral rolls was a pre-condition for a free and fair ballot. The effectiveness of the right to stand for election was undoubtedly contingent upon the fair exercise of the right to vote. A sufficiently close causal link therefore existed between the applicant party’s right to stand in the repeat parliamentary election of 28   March 2004 and its complaint about the voter registration system prevailing at that time.   For the purposes of applying Article   3 of Protocol No.   1, any electoral legislation had to be assessed in the light of the political evolution of the country concerned, so that features that would be unacceptable in the context of one system could be justified in the context of another. In the present case, the electoral authorities had had the challenge of remedying manifest shortcomings in the electoral rolls within very tight deadlines, in a “post-revolutionary” political situation. Consequently, the unexpected change in the rules on voter registration one month before the repeat parliamentary election of 28   March 2004 was, in the very specific circumstances of the situation, a solution not open to criticism under Article 3 of Protocol No.   1.   As to whether or not the active system of voter registration, which partly shifted responsibility for the accuracy of electoral rolls from the authorities onto the voters, was compatible with the Contracting States’ positive obligation to ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people, the Court considered that the Georgian State should be granted a wide margin of appreciation in that regard.   The Georgian State was not alone in opting for such a system of voter registration: several Western European democracies, in particular the United Kingdom and Portugal, also relied to a considerable extent on voters’ individual declarations when compiling the national electoral rolls.   It followed that the active system of voter registration could not in itself amount to a breach of the applicant party’s right to stand for election. In the particular circumstances of the present case, this system proved not to be the cause of the problem of ballot fraud but a reasonable attempt to remedy it, whilst not providing a perfect solution.   On balance, given the specific circumstances of the political situation in the Georgian State, there had been no violation of the applicant party’s right to stand for election, as understood by Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, on account of the introduction on 27 February 2004 of the new voter registration system.   Concerning the composition of the electoral commissions   The applicant party’s complaint under this head was mostly based on the argument that the composition of, and decision-making process within, the electoral commission amounted as such to a violation of Article   3 of Protocol   No.   1.   Having examined the composition of the electoral commissions, the Court concluded that this composition at all levels indeed lacked sufficient checks and balances against the President’s power and that the commissions could hardly enjoy independence from outside political pressure. However, in the absence of any proof of particular acts of abuse of power or electoral fraud committed within the electoral commissions to the applicant party’s detriment, no breach of the latter’s right to stand for election could be established.   There had accordingly been no violation of Article   3 of Protocol   No.   1 in that respect.   Concerning the disfranchisement of the Khulo and Kobuleti voters   The Court considered that the Khulo and Kobuleti voters’ inability to participate in the repeat parliamentary election held under the proportional system had to be questioned under the principle of universal suffrage. It therefore had to examine whether the State authorities had done everything that could reasonably have been expected of them in order to ensure the inclusion of Khulo and Kobuleti voters in the repeat parliamentary election prior to the final vote tally and whether there was arbitrariness or a lack of proportionality between the restriction in question and the legitimate aim pursued by the Georgian State. In doing so, the Court noted that it was not the applicant party’s right to win the repeat parliamentary election which was at stake but its right to stand freely and effectively.   The CEC had not issued any act annulling the Ordinance of 2   April 2004 and officially cancelling the repeat election in Khulo and Kobuleti. If it had been truly impossible to enforce the Ordinance of 2 April 2004, it would have been more compatible with the fundamental principles of the rule of law for the CEC to cancel the scheduled polls in Khulo and Kobuleti in the form of a clear-cut, formal decision, on the basis of a relevant and sufficient justification for the disfranchisement of some 60,000 voters.   The Court observed that, contrary to its positive obligations under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, the Georgian State had not attempted any further action aimed at including the Khulo and Kobuleti voters in the country-wide election after the failure to open polling stations on 18 April 2004.   Taking into account the importance of the principle of universal suffrage, the Court could not accept that the legitimate interest of having a fresh Parliament elected “at a reasonable interval” was a sufficient justification for the Georgian State’s inability or unwillingness to undertake further reasonable measures for the purpose of enfranchising 60,000   Ajarian voters.   The Court accordingly concluded that the CEC’s decision of 2 April 2004 to annul the election results in the Khulo and Kobuleti electoral districts had not been made in a transparent and consistent manner. The CEC had not adduced relevant and sufficient reasons for its decision, nor had it provided adequate procedural safeguards against an abuse of power.     Furthermore, without having recourse to any additional measures aimed at organising elections in the Khulo and Kobuleti districts after 18   April 2004, the CEC had taken a hasty decision to terminate the country ‑ wide election without any valid justification. The exclusion of those two districts from the general election process had failed to comply with a number of rule of law requisites and resulted in what was effectively a disfranchisement of a significant section of the population   There had accordingly been a violation of the applicant party’s right to stand for election under Article 3 of Protocol No.   1.   Article 14   In the light of all the material in its possession, the Court did not find any evidence which might arguably have suggested that either the challenged electoral mechanisms – the system for voter registration and the composition of electoral commissions – or the events which took place in Khulo and Kobuleti had been exclusively aimed at the applicant party and did not affect the other candidates standing for that election.   There had thus been no violation of Article   14, taken in conjunction with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1.     The partly dissenting opinions of Judges Mularoni and Popović are appended to the judgment.     ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Press contacts Adrien Meyer (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 33 37) Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) Sania Ivedi (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 59 45)   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. [1] Under Article 43 of the Convention, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 ‑ member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer. [2] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.