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Suspended Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava and other National Movement members accuse a district election official of being partial. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–Suspended Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava Thursday broke into a district election commission office in Marneuli and swore at the local official in charge.

It’s the latest in a series of incidents involving the party, as Georgia gets closed to the local elections on June 15.

Also others UNM members swore at the district election official in Marneuli, a town in the south of Georgia, demanding an explanation for why they wanted to cancel the candidacy of UNM candidate Akmamed Imamkuliev.

UNM members Nugzar Tsiklauri and Irma Nadirashvili along with Ugulava and others broke into the room of the district commission head and accused him of acting in the interests of the government.


The same day, the party complained to the interagency election commission claiming their candidate for Marneuli gamgebeli is being pressured. Party members claim the CEC made a political decision when it canceled Imamkuliev’s candidacy.

CEC on Thursday issued a statement claiming that the UNM members’ actions is interference in the work of the election administration, which is unacceptable. They called on election subjects to avoid actions which may be seen as pressure on the election administration, and to keep within the frames of the law.

UNM members in the morning said they had information that the district commission was planning to remove cancel Imamkuliev’s registration as a candidate for gamgebeli, which is the elected leader of a town. This caused UNM activists to go to Marneuli and, joining together with local activists, organize a rally outside the election office.

The reasons why Imamkuliev was removed from registration is that he didn’t comply with a candidate’s requirements, because he hasn’t lived in Georgia for the last two years.

But UNM activists recalled CEC’s decision on May 20, when Georgian Dream candidates were not removed from registration in Rustavi and Poti for the same kind of violation; they too haven’t been living in Georgia for the last two years.

CEC, however, in April cancelled the registration of former Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili’s candidacy in Gori, because of a failure to qualify for the same two years residency rule.