THE GEORGIAN LABOUR PARTY v. GEORGIA JUDGMENT 39 124. As to the Court’s examination of the compliance of the impugned disfranchisement with the principles of Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, it must focus mostly on whether there was arbitrariness or a lack of proportionality between the restriction in question and the legitimate aim pursued by the respondent State. Given the concept of “implied limitations” under Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, the respondent States are always free to rely on any legitimate aim which could be proved to be compatible, in the particular circumstances of a case, with the principles of the rule of law and the general objectives of the Convention (see Ždanoka, cited above, § 115). 125. The Court must consequently examine whether, in the present case, the State authorities did everything that could reasonably have been expected of them in order to ensure the inclusion of Khulo and Kobuleti voters in the repeat parliamentary election prior to the final vote tally. The applicant party’s argument that the respondent State could have held an election in those districts after the vote tally of 18 April 2004 is in this regard irrelevant, since neither Article 106 nor any other provision of the EC envisaged the possibility of holding a mid-term or other type of interim election under the proportional system once the countrywide elections had been finalised by the CEC (see paragraph 44 above). (b) Annulment of the election results in the Khulo and Kobuleti electoral districts on 2 April 2004 126. In the Court’s view, the exclusion of the Khulo and Kobuleti electorate from the repeat parliamentary election cannot be said to be a consequence only of the CEC’s vote tally of 18 April 2004. Rather, the exclusion originated in the annulment of the election results for those two electoral districts by virtue of the CEC Ordinance of 2 April 2004 (see paragraph 26 above). Consequently, when examining the disfranchisement of those constituencies, the Court cannot neglect the manner in which the CEC adopted the Ordinance in question. In this regard, the Court will rely to a considerable extent on the 28 March 2004 EOM Report, which, submitted by the Government as part of their observations, was also endorsed by the applicant party as evidence (see paragraphs 50 and 98 above). 127. In line with the findings of the above-mentioned Report, the Court notes that the lawfulness of the CEC’s decision to annul the election results in the Khulo and Kobuleti districts was questionable (see paragraph 53 above). While it was based solely on Article 105 §§ 12 and 13 of the EC, the latter provisions did not provide for the CEC’s power to annul results in electoral districts. These provisions rather referred to the conditions in which the CEC could exercise its right to organise repeat polls and to resort to various investigative measures in reply to electoral complaints (see paragraph 44 above). The CEC Chairman’s opinion is very important in this regard. According to the 28 March 2004 EOM Report (see paragraph 53 above):