Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and Honorary Chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party and the former Prime Minister of the country, on Monday said a “majority” of the public “firmly supports transparency” of domestic non-governmental organisations.

Ivanishvili made the comment to a rally in Tbilisi in support of the controversial bill on transparency of foreign influence, which calls for registration of non-commercial legal entities and media outlets in the country as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they derive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad.

He told the gathering the draft law served to “strengthen the sovereignty” of the country.

He also claimed the opposition United National Movement party and NGOs had “succeeded in misleading a large part of the public” in protests against the bill last year, before the Government withdrew the initiative to “ensure the political stability of the country and take into account the opinion of fellow citizens who had been deceived”.

This year, the situation is radically different. The Nationals and their masters could no longer deceive the people, and today a majority of the public firmly supports the transparency of NGOs. In addition, today we have full resources to pass the law on transparency without harming the stability of the state, and to move the country forward. Making the right move at the right time is the ultimate art of politics. My political past allows me to claim that as a political leader - I can calculate such moves well”, he said.

Another question can also be heard among the public: Would it have been preferable to make the most of the temporary peace and forgo the consideration of the draft laws on LGBT propaganda and NGOs [“family values” and “protection of minors”], perhaps even postponing their consideration until after the elections? In this regard, I would like to tell you unequivocally: let no one have the illusion that they would have let us be for a long time without these draft laws”, Ivanishvili added.
The party official also mentioned calls by the UNM party for introduction of foreign vetting of integrity of domestic judges, which he said meant calls for “introduction of foreign governance” and would have led to “repressions and staff[ing] of the judiciary system with agents”. He also said demands of the opposition were related to the Central Election Commission “serving a similar purpose”, which the Parliament of Georgia rightly had not taken into account.

Despite the fact that, according to all independent international studies, the Georgian court is ahead of courts of many EU member states in terms of justice and effectiveness, despite the fact that they cannot identify a single case that the court decided under the pressure of the political authorities or in a generally unfair manner, the persistent pressure on the authorities to seize the judiciary continues, and it will continue until they lose all hope of success”, he added.

Therefore, the initiation of the laws on LGBT propaganda and NGOs served two functions: on the one hand, the legislative regulation of these two issues has no alternative, and on the other, the premature expenditure of accumulated energy will completely drain the power of the already weakened agency”, he continued.

Ivanishvili added the timing to reintroduce the draft law had also been “chosen perfectly”, adding with these processes, the country and the authorities would “lose nothing except for the fact we will once again upset the Global War Party”, in reference to the UNM and its supporters, which he claimed did not “lack resentment towards us to begin with because we refused to open a second front”, in reference to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

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