President Appoints Non-Judge Member to HCoJ Board
The President of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, has appointed Kakha Tsikarishvili, a member of the Group of Independent Lawyers, as a non-judge member of the Board of the High Council of Justice (HCoJ), the body overseeing the judiciary, for a term of four years. The information about the appointment was reported by Giorgi Mskhiladze, the Parliamentary Secretary of the President, at the briefing on July 15.
According to Mskhiladze, although the President has the right to autonomously appoint members of the HCoJ Board, but on June 21 she decided to create a commission to select two candidates for the President’s consideration, from which she chose Tsikarishvili.
“We hope that this practice will be used in the future for the selection of judges in the judicial system, and that this was a good example,” – noted Mskhiladze.
There are 6 non-judge members of the HCoJ board, 5 of whom are appointed by the Parliament and one by the President. The vacancy now filled by Tsikarishvili was created after the term of Tamar Gvamichava, who was appointed in 2020, ended. Notably, Kakha Tsikarishvili is one of the first attorneys to speak out about the judicial clan in Georgia during an interview with the RFI/RL Georgian service.
Kakha Tsikarishvili, is currently the project coordinator in the NGO “Rights Georgia”. Previously, in 2016 he was an assistant to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of Georgia; in 2013-2015 he was a member of the Disciplinary Board of Judges of the General Courts of Georgia; in 2012-2013 and 2016-2018 he was a legal expert of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP); in 2007-2011 he worked as the Deputy Chief of the Judicial Administration and Management Reform Project (USAID JAMR). Since 2005 he has worked as a lecturer of the Comparative Criminal Law Course at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs.
Also Read:
- 12/07/2024 – Watchdogs Denounce HCoJ’s Clampdown on Monitoring Access
- 17/10/2023 – Parliament Elects Two Non-Judge Members of HCoJ
