Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili said Saturday she had vetoed a bill on foreign influence that sparked protests and plunged the country into a political crisis, threatening to derail her pro-European aspirations. closer ties with Russia.
The Georgian Parliament, which passed the bill in three readings, it is widely expected to override the veto. The ruling party, the Georgian Dream, which introduced the proposed legislation, can turn it into law as early as May 28, when Parliament sits again.
Ms. Zourabichvili called her veto “symbolic,” but it nevertheless represented a new stage in the political conflict between the country’s pro-Western opposition, which Ms. Zourabichvili supports, and the Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012.
The crisis has highlighted the highly polarized nature of Georgian politics. He questioned the country’s pro-Western orientation, enshrined in its Constitution, as US and European officials threatened to downgrade ties with the country and impose sanctions on its leaders if the law was finalized and that protests against her were crushed. .
Georgia, a mountainous nation of 3.6 million in the middle of the Caucasus, was once a pro-Western pioneer among former Soviet states. If it turns away from the West in favor of a closer relationship with Russia, the geopolitics of the entire region could change, due to the country’s central geographic position.
THE law Project which triggered the crisis has an innocuous-sounding name: “On the transparency of foreign influence”.
It requires nongovernmental groups and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign sources to register as “organizations representing the interests of a foreign power” and provide annual financial statements of their activities. The Georgian Ministry of Justice would be given broad powers to monitor compliance with the provisions. Violations could result in fines equal to more than $9,000.
The ruling party insists the bill is necessary to strengthen Georgia’s sovereignty against external interference in its political life from Western-funded NGOs and media. But the country’s vocal political opposition calls it a “Russian law,” designed to transform Georgia into a pro-Moscow state in substance, if not in name.
“This law, in its essence and spirit, is fundamentally Russian, contrary to our constitution and all European standards,” Ms. Zourabichvili said. said by announcing the veto on Saturday. “This law is not subject to any changes or improvements, making it an easy veto,” she said in a televised address. “This law must be repealed.”
In 2018, Ms. Zourabichivili was supported by the Georgian Dream party in her successful bid to become president. But since then, Ms. Zourabichvili has become increasingly critical of the party’s policies, a process of mutual alienation that culminated in the party’s failed attempt to remove her in 2023.
Born in Paris to a family of prominent Georgian émigrés who fled the country’s Bolshevik occupation in 1921, Ms. Zourabichvili, in her first official role in Georgia, served as French ambassador there in 2003. The following year, she accepted Georgian citizenship and became the country’s first female foreign minister, a position she held until October 2005. Before becoming President of Georgia, Ms. Zourabichvili also founded her own political party and was elected to Parliament in 2016.
Although her role is largely ceremonial, Ms. Zurabichvili has become the public face of protest against the dominance of the Georgian Dream party, as opposition parties in Georgia have suffered from internal divisions.
Since the bill was presented in early April, the country’s capital, Tbilisi, has rush in in the protests against this. Protesters, including many students, marched through the streets of Tbilisi almost every day shouting “No to Russian law.” They repeatedly surrounded the imposing Soviet-era parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue and attempted to block its entrances.
Many protests turned violent as riot police pushed demonstrators away from the Parliament building, often using tear gas, pepper spray and fists to disperse them. Many opposition members were arrested and beaten. Some reported being harassed and intimidated by authorities. On Saturday, following Ms. Zourabichvili’s veto, demonstrators once again filled the square in front of Parliament.
In late April, the ruling party, led by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a reclusive oligarch who returned to Georgia in the early 2000s after making his fortune in Russia, held a rally in support of the bill. On Friday, thousands of conservative Georgians also marched in a procession through the city center to one of Tbilisi’s main cathedrals. Many of them said they supported the bill.
“I have friends in Ukraine, in Russia, in Moldova,” said Gocha Kekenadze, a farmer who came from the Kakheti region, east of Tbilisi, to join the procession. “We want to live like before” in the Soviet Union, Mr. Kekenadze, 62, said. “It’s the Americans who tell us to pick up a gun and fight Russia.”
