Elene Chelidze

COMM 2230
Final paper
Negotiation about Proportional system with Georgian Dream
Background story:
On June 13, the opposition parties submitted on transferring to the proportional election
system and The Georgian Dream which is rulling party nowadays made key promise to
protesters on June 24, 2019 that the next elections would be changed to proportional
electoral system with zero threshold. On November 12, the bills submitted by both the
opposition and rulling party, was discussed by the Parliament of Georgia. However, bill
failed to gain enough votes and Georgian Dream postponed the discussion twice,but the
ruling party changed the promise and said that proportional elections would be held from
2024 and in 2020 elections will be held under mixed,proportinal and majoritarian system.

Topics that will be discussed below:

What is Proportional Electoral System
Interests and BATNA of Georgian Dream
Interests and BATNA of opposition
Issues and positions
Today,the parliamentary elections in Georgia are held in a mixed manner,it means that 77
out of 150 MPs are elected and 73 are majoritarians. It means that parties represent the
party list of 150 people as well as the majoritatian candidate in each constituency. For
instance, in the elections of 2016, ruling party, Georgian Dream received 48% of the vote,
but at the expense of winning 71 out of 73 majoritarian constituencies they still managed to
have 115 MPs. As we can see the ruling party that got less than 50% still maintained more
than 75% of the seats. Opposition party is demanding propotrional system because if in
2016, elections were held in that manner,all of the 150 seats would be filled from party lists
and what’s more the number of votes and parliamentary mandates received by parties
would be more proportionate. To make it more clear, if the parliament elections were fully
proportional, with the barrier of 5%, the Georgian Dream would receive 83 seats instead of
115 and in that way there would be no constitutional majority. Other involved parties like
National movement, which received 27.11% of the vote would have 50 MPs instead of 27
and the Patriots Alliance which gained 5.01% would have 17 MPs. So now we can clearly see
The interest of the oppostion party is to fully change the system from mixed to proportional.
The main reason is that at the expense of the majoritarians, the votes which are gained by
the parties are inappropriate to the mandates they have received and the ruling party still
maintains most presenters in Parliament. Interests of Georgian Dream is to postpone this
discussion and do not change the mixed system because then it would be harder for them
to take the majority in the Parliament and in that way there will be more chances for
Opposition party to have more representers in goverment than they do now. To sum up
the BATNA of Opposite party is to change the election system to fully proportional
because nowadays we can say that only the ruling party has a say in government. The
BATNA of Georgian Dream is to postpone and maintain the mixed system as long as they
can because it is better for their power.
From the beginning of the speech when Georgian Dream agreed on changing the system,
we thought that protesters, opposition and the ruling party had the same position- that
elections in 2020 will be held by proportional system. People thought that there were
only little issues left until the agreement but than the ruler party started to bluff and
chose competitive way of negotiation.

Resources and capabilities:

Georgian dream makes up most of the government and they have more power in making
decisions. We know that they don’t want to change mixed system to proportional and so
they will not vote in favor. From 104 lawmakers representing the ruling party only 57 of
them voted in favor,37 abstained and 3 of them voted against the bill. All of the MPs from
the opposition parties supported the amendment.
Opposition has only 46 lawmakers in government so in decision making process they do
not have much say. What they have is the power of protesters which is wide segment of
population and they are demanding the proportional system for next elections.
Opposition has also support from a group of civil society organizations, including
Transparency International Georgia and Georgian Young Lawyers Association. They have
held a joint news briefing today and called on the Parliament to support transition to
proportional electoral system.

The tension between parties:

From the story mentioned above we can say that the ruling party, Georgian Dream used
bluffing from the very beginning, when they promised protesters that they will change
the system of elections to proportional. Before the meeting, the ruling party members
stated that they would not compromise. They were not able to cooperate and postponed
the discussion twice, which only meant for them to win some time. Even though, the
opposite side was ready for cooperativeness and discussion with the ruling party, the
negotiation process started after a couple of months.

First round of negotiation:

On the first round of the negotiation there was no agreement reached between the ruling
party and the opposite side. On the meeting they discussed the “German model”.
Representatives of government said that rules of the German model do not comply with
the Georgian constitution. However, NGOs and other politicians claim that German
electoral model developed by the opposition does not contradict the constitution. We can
say that ruling party continues bluffing and is trying to do everything to avoid the
proportional system because they are afraid on consequences. The format of negotiations
between the government and the opposition was created by the efforts of international
partners. The Parliament Speaker Archil Talakvadze said that they would listen to the
arguments that opposite side has and would help return the developments “to a normal
political process”. After the first round of negotiation MP Giga Bokeria said that “protests
will continue outside and dialogue-inside” until the society receives what it deserves. This
became necessary after the government withdrew its promise of proportional elections
and this was followed by protests from civil society and the rest of the political spectrum.

Second round of negotiation:

On December 8, second round of negotiation was held, this negotiation was attended by
different foreign diplomats. The negotiation was mostly about discussing the crisis and
the ways to deal with it but even in this case Irakli Kobakhidze said that he did not think
there is any crisis to deal with, which makes us think that leaders of Georgian dream are
not considering this situation as important. Despite the first negotiation, more parties
were included in this one, involving politicians from different oppositional parties.
Former speakers of Parliament- Akaki Asatiani and Nino Burjanadze were also on the
negotiating table. While negotiating the ruling party said that they need more time to
think and discuss the issues about the proportional system. They postponed the meeting
again in order to negotiate different possibilities within the group. It must be worth
mentioning that one of the leaders Tea Tsulukiani seems very pessimistic about the whole
negotiation like other representatives of Georgian Dream. She said- “No results have been
achieved today because we did not see the possibility”. However, we can say that even
the leaders of Georgian Dream are not on the same table. To the question, if the ruling
party has compromised to the opposition, Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of the
parliamentary majority said that they have not discussed German model and continued to
talk about the rule of distributing majoritarian mandates and the next meeting will also
be related to this issue. Even though, on the first meeting it was said that there was no gap
between German model and Georgian Model they still kept saying that German model is
unacceptable, as it is anti-constitutional. Time by time, the opposite side is getting
pessimistic, Grigol Vashadze, chairman of the United National Movement said that they
are getting ready for the worse and emphasizes that no agreement has been reached yet.

Third round of negotiation:

On December 15, the ruling team, Georgian Dream and opposition had the third round of
negotiations, involving foreign diplomats accredited in Tbilisi to discuss the electoral
system reform. I think it is not a surprise anymore that this meeting proved unsuccessful
too. In this meeting they discussed the possibility of creating 10 multi-mandate
constituencies instead of present 73 single-mandate constituencies. This suggestion was
made because the Parliament’s downvoting on the amendment that the system would
transfer to fully proportional system from 2020 instead of 2024. Leaders of the ruling
party continue being pessimistic and giving expression that in reality they don’t even
consider changing the system. “Unfortunately, the model of multi-mandate
constituencies provides unequal representation and interests of smaller and larger
districts”- Parliament Speaker Archil Talakvadze told the press. He also says that “we
could not agree about this model, but we will continue the dialogue”, it obviously means
that Georgian Dream only continues the negotiation to win the time and they just avoid
saying no and they are doing their best to think of any disadvantages of proportional
system. Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani is also criticizing the model and says that they
analyzed and found out that the discussed model does not work well in other countries.
Meanwhile, representatives of other parties said that they expected proposals about the
electoral reform from the ruling party. After three rounds of negotiation leaders and
representatives from opposite parties were expecting at least some suggestion from the
Georgian Dream. “At the previous meeting we agreed that they [ruling party] would state
their positions, but we could not hear anything precise [from them],” said Giorgi
Vashadze, who is leader of “New Georgia”. “We are still waiting for their offer; they are
in a bad position as they could not come up with any model that would give them any
chance of retaining power”. Another representatives of the opposite team “Development
Movement” emphasized the need to continue the dialogue between the Georgian Dream
and opposition. He points out that the negotiation must continue because this is the only
place where the authorities and representatives of Georgian Dream are speaking with the
opposition and the international organizations about the issue. “The negotiations will
continue. This is important to ensure that the authorities are not given any opportunity to
run away from this [format of negotiations] too,” Usupashvili added.

Value creating:
After reading this 5 page long essay which discussed every aspect of the negotiation that
is yet never ending and unsuccessful, it is easy to say that the ruling party is not trying to
negotiate and really discuss the issues associated with the task of changing the mixed
system to fully proportional one. The ruling party is being competitive and avoider. They
used bluffing so many times that it will be really hard for the opposite party to openly
discuss issues and then trust the Georgian Dream. The protesters and opposite parties are
fighting for democracy, while the government knows that the only way to solve this
problem is compromise so they are trying to avoid the change and to do that as long as
they can.

USED SOURCES:
 https://civil.ge/archives/331714 [Accessed December 19,2019]
 https://civil.ge/archives/330815 [Accessed December 19,2019]
 https://civil.ge/archives/326316 [Accessed December 19,2019]
 http://www.tabula.ge/ge/story/150965-ra-aris-proporciuli-saarchevno-sistema-da-
rit-ganxsvavdeba-is-dghevandelisgan [Accessed December 19,2019]
 http://www.tabula.ge/ge/story/161641-xelisuflebas-da-opozicias-shoris-
dipkorpusis-tanxlebit-molaparakebis-me-3-raundi [Accessed December 19,2019]
 http://www.tabula.ge/ge/story/161149-tsulukiani-vimsjelebt-mravalmandatian-
mazhoritarul-olqebze [Accessed December 19,2019]
 http://www.tabula.ge/ge/story/161145-xelisuflebas-da-opozicias-shoris-
dipkorpusis-tanxlebit-molaparakebebis-me-2-raundi [Accessed December
19,2019]