Opposition Slams Presidential Address

At parliamentary debates on February 15 opposition parliamentarians criticized the President’s state of the nation address to the Parliament on Tuesday for not focusing on problems.

“The government and the President have spoken constantly over the past two years only about success. We did not hear from his speech about the problems and about those institutional changes which should be undertaken if we want to establish a real State,” MP Zviad Dzidziguri of the opposition Conservative Party said at the session.

“He spoke much about education reform… but he did not speak about the reform of the judiciary. He mentioned the courts only once and in the context of a warning, when he warned judges not to rule for conditional sentences,” MP Dzidziguri said.

He said that the judiciary “has never been as influenced by phone calls [from the authorities] as it is today.”

“Today, the judiciary is part of the Prosecutor’s Office, while the latter has become part of the Interior Ministry,” he added.

He also slammed the law enforcement agencies and recalled the case of an attack against MP Valery Gelashvili, from the opposition Republican Party.

“Several months have passed, but we have no answer about when they are going to end the investigation of this case,” MP Dzidziguri said.

MP Dzidziguri also criticized the election administrations for being under the government’s control.

“The Central Election Commission and election administrations have become totally controlled by the authorities. When Gia Kavtaradze [former Chairman of the Central Election Commission] was appointed as Justice Minister it was regarded as a promotion for him, but the real reason for this appointment was that Kavtaradze was not totally controlled by the leadership and now they have proposed a candidate for the Central Election Commission chairmanship [Guram Chalagashvili] who will be fully under their control,” he said.

Parliamentarians from the opposition New Rights party refused to participate in the debates. “We were demanding that the President should also attend these debates, but our request was ignored. We do not see any reason to participate in the debates,” MP Pikria Chikhradze of the New Rights said at the parliamentary session.

MP Ivliane Khaindrava of the Republican opposition party also said that the President’s state of the nation address to the Parliament “is part of a dialogue between the institutions” and this “should not turn into a monologue.”