Central Election Commission fires critical adviser

Vako Maisuradze, an advisor to chair of the Central Election Commission (CEC), has said he has been fired for criticising the government in a post on social media.

In a post on Facebook on 1 December, Maisuradze wrote that any action or inaction that delayed Georgia’s European integration was against the state’s interests.

‘Let’s not allow violence against peaceful demonstrators, and if there are those among them who violate the law and abuse their right to participate in the demonstration, legal measures should be taken against them, not beatings and criminal, cowardly retaliation!’, he continued in the same post.

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In the comments section of his post on 31 December announcing his dismissal, he called the official justification for this ‘absurd’.

‘They said that we no longer need an advisor due to the transition to electronic technologies’.

‘In addition to me, other employees were also dismissed, and as far as I know, they were also [fired] for political reasons’, he said.

The CEC stated on 18 December that a ‘reorganisation’ of staff was related to the next phase of ‘institutional development’ and aimed to ensure ‘effective governance’.

‘We have a well-founded suspicion that, now or in the future, interested parties may try to use this issue for their own purposes and politicise it. Therefore, in order to inform the public correctly and objectively, we call on the media and parties involved in the election processes not to use the above-mentioned alleged trends, which distort the true purpose of the institutional reorganisation, to tarnish the reputation of the election administration’, CEC said.