36 THE GEORGIAN LABOUR PARTY v. GEORGIA JUDGMENT group to cross the administrative border of the Ajarian Autonomous Republic (“the AAR”) and, on the latter date, the polling stations failed to open. 113. The Government claimed that tensions between the central and local authorities at the material time had degenerated into an armed clash with “armed criminals serving Mr A. Abashidze [the Head of local authorities]”. Thus, Mr G. Chalagashvili, one of the Government’s representatives before the Court, claimed that he, as a member of the electoral group commissioned by the CEC to organise new polls in the Khulo and Kobuleti districts on 18 April 2004, had witnessed some one hundred armed persons opening fire at the group on the administrative border. According to the Government, those persons were later convicted of the offence of obstruction of the electoral process. However, they did not submit a copy of the verdict or any other material related to the relevant criminal proceedings. As sole evidence of the tense relations between the central and Ajarian authorities, the Government referred to the circumstances of the case of Assanidze v. Georgia ([GC], no. 71503/01, ECHR 2004-II). 114. The Government also asked the Court to pay particular attention to the political situation in Georgia at the material time. They submitted that, since the then Parliament had almost suspended its activity pending the repeat parliamentary election of 28 March 2004, any further delay in the finalisation of the countrywide election results would have caused public disorder and led to a collapse of the normal legislative process. Failure to finalise the election results on 18 April 2004 would have breached the principle of holding an election “at a reasonable interval” within the meaning of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. 115. The Government further argued that the disfranchised population’s votes in the two Ajarian districts could be considered to be “wasted votes”, which is an unavoidable phenomenon in any democratic country. They considered that the exclusion of a certain part of the electorate from an election, “even if this part consists of several million voters”, did not block the emergence of political alternatives within society and thus did not interfere in the democratic processes of the State. Moreover, according to the Government, the repeat parliamentary election could legally be considered to have been held, even without counting the votes from the Khulo and Kobuleti districts, as more than one-third of the total number of registered voters had taken part (Article 105 § 3 of the EC). Mr Chalagashvili, as the Chairman of the CEC, further underlined that, since the exclusion of the Khulo and Kobuleti electoral districts from the vote tally was lawful, there was no need for the Government to show the Court any particular justification for that decision. 116. The Government submitted that, in any event, the applicant party had failed to substantiate its claim that it could have received sufficient