40% of the surveyed says neither self-government bodies nor parliament majoritarian members reflect the interests of citizens. This is a result of a survey conducted by the ‘Caucasus Research Resource Center’ in the period of March 16-28, 2016 throughout the whole country. The survey was ordered by ‘Transparency International Georgia’ in which 2032 people took part.

After analyzing the results, it can be concluded that the population of the self-governing cities assess the quality of the self-governments more negatively than the electorate of the rest municipalities assesses the performance of a municipality head or an assembly:

To the following question: who reflects the interests of the citizens most? – 7% of the surveyed thinks of a municipality assembly, whereas in the self-governing cities only 3% answered positively towards this question in favor of the municipality assembly.

It is noteworthy, the governors earn more approval of the citizens over the mayors: 15% of the surveyed thinks that their interests are reflected by their municipality governor while only 13% answered the same way towards this question in favor of the mayor.

What is new about the 2016 survey is that the citizens’ attitude towards the elected majoritarian members of the assemblies and parliament is now known: only 7% of the interviewed says that their interests are expressed by the elected assembly member, while 5% (every twentieth) of the 2032 citizens thinks the same in favor of the parliament members.

When it comes to the assessing the majoritarian and proportional members it is noteworthy that 18% of the surveyed assesses the working quality of the whole parliament negatively. Only 7% of the interviewed does not assess negatively none of the parliament members.

2016 survey results give us opportunity to analyze the attitudes of the residents of the municipalities towards the municipal services.

The uppermost discontent among the population is triggered by the streets’ infrastructure (30%). It is followed, with 28%, by the non-existence or the insufficient amount of public places such as: parks, etc. The lack of green surface is third among the problems with 26%.

Regarding the positive attitudes, public transport with 41%, preschools with 38% and green surface with 38% respectively generate the content among the society.

Transparency International Georgia calls on self-governments to allocate the budget while taking the needs of the citizens into considerations. It is important that they take the citizens’ interests into account when planning the projects and also provide the high degree of involvement of the population in the decision-making process. The members of the assemblies ought to communicate more with their voters in order to tackle those problems for which they were elected in 2014 self-government elections.