The Legal Affairs Committee Chairman, Anri Okhanashvili, left the committee meeting, where the discussion of the Russian law on so-called Agents had been ongoing for almost eight hours, due to the opposition MPs.
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Recently, Okhanashvili expelled Paata Manjgaladze, Giorgi Vashadze, Levan Khabeishvili, and Khatia Dekanoidze from the hall. Before that, Tinatin Bokuchava and Salome Samadashvili left the hall.
The discussion of the Russian law initiated by the ruling Georgian Dream is taking place against a backdrop of noise. Members of the opposition claim that the adoption of the mentioned law will harm Georgia's European future.
“This is not a law about transparency. This is the law by which Bidzina Ivanishvili wants to end democracy in our country. He wants to cancel fair and free elections. He wants the EU to withdraw from relations and accession negotiations with us. This is Yanukovych's way. Therefore, it is clear that people who tell the truth are expelled from the meeting.
At the meeting, we were listening to absolutely demagogic, meaningless words from Bidzina Ivanishvili's slave. More precisely, he is not Ivanishvili's slave, but the slave of Ivanishvili’s slave. We could not get an answer to the main question. When your friends tell you that if you accept this law, the European future of Georgia will end, what is the value of crossing the line with the European choice of the Georgian people and accepting it anyway? We did not hear the answer to this question. The answer is simple: Bidzina Ivanishvili does not want any European future for you," said Salome Samadashvili, a member of Lelo.
Alongside the discussion, a rally is taking place outside the parliament building, where representatives of non-governmental organizations and journalists from online media, who were not allowed to enter the parliament in the morning, are present.
Georgian Dream has returned to the parliament and intends to adopt the draft law on so-called Foreign Agents before the end of the current session, which it refused a year ago as a result of a large-scale public protest and promised to withdraw it "unconditionally, without any reservations". The text of the draft law remained the same - only the term "agent of foreign influence" was replaced by the term "organization carrying out the interests of a foreign power". The Russian law was criticized by the United States of America, the European Union, Great Britain, NATO, the United Nations, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). They believe that such a law will divert Georgia from the European path and will negatively affect the work of independent non-governmental and media organizations
