| | Georgia’s big dream risks slipping away |
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By Jorge Liboreiro
When EU leaders gathered in December to grant Georgia its intensely coveted, stubbornly evasive status of candidate country, the last thing they could imagine was that, just four months later, police officers would be deploying water cannons and tear gas against protesters waving EU flags and playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
But even the sweetest dreams can turn ghoulish overnight.
For the past month, Georgians have taken to the streets to demand the dismissal of a draft law promoted by the government. The legislation would require media outlets and non-profit organisations to be publicly registered as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of their funds from abroad, which many do as a legacy of the Western support in the former Soviet republic’s transition to democracy.
Under the text, the “re-branded” entities would have to submit an annual financial statement and the Ministry of Justice would be empowered to conduct regular monitoring.
The law was met with fierce contestation, as the opposition and civil society argued the provisions would be exploited to expose, target and eventually muzzle independent voices who don’t toe the official line. Comparisons with a similar bill introduced by the Kremlin a decade ago led critics to dub the Georgian attempts the “Russian law,” further fanning the flames. The EU and the US reacted with harsh statements denouncing the proposal and calling, in undiplomatic terms, for its withdrawal.
Still, the government, undeterred by international pressure, has pushed ahead with the plans, bringing the law to its first and second readings. Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze insists the law is needed to ensure a “minimum standard of transparency” and complies with “all basic legal principles.” Controversially, Kobakhidze has accused NGOs of political interference and revolutionary attempts, which he appears bent on repressing before the elections in late October.
President Salome Zourabichvili, an avowed defender of European integration, has snapped back, giving interview after interview undermining the “foreign influence” law as a diktat from Vladimir Putin and openly taking the side of the young Georgians demonstrating on the streets. “The Georgian people cannot and will not be silenced!” she recently wrote on social media.
Zourabichvili has said she would veto the bill but her veto could be overridden with a parliamentary majority, which the government enjoys. In the meantime, protests have intensified and so has the police crackdown, leaving behind dozens of arrests and reported cases of injuries.
With only the third reading pending before the finish line, Brussels is stepping up the rhetoric and resorting to the country’s membership hopes as leverage to affect change. “Georgia is at a crossroads. It should stay the course on the road to Europe,” said Ursula von der Leyen, urging the government to “heed” the people’s message. “Georgia is an EU candidate country, I call on its authorities to ensure the right to peaceful assembly,” said Josep Borrell in a separate statement.
It doesn’t take much to read between the lines and realise the EU is warning the accession process would be frozen if the proposal does become the law of the land, even if nobody has explicitly said so. Such a scenario would be devastating for Georgia, which has devoted huge energy to put its often-wobbly Western trajectory on a stable footing.
For a country that suffered first-hand the pain of Russian aggression, vying for EU and NATO membership is a political shield, a glimmer of hope that can provide its citizenship a perspective of a better future. Something that, as we now see, can be worth fighting for. |
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