Influential Group Initiates Hard-Hitting Proposals on Lustration

A law on lustration should target not only former KGB employees and Communist party functionaries, but also those who have been cooperating with Russian state structures since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, an influential non-governmental group with close ties to the Saakashvili?s administration said.

Liberty Institute unveiled its blueprint of the law on lustration on February 21, which proposes to oblige Georgian politicians and officials to make any past links with Russian officials public.

?I will put it very bluntly; for example: if any representative of any political party in Georgia talks with Mr. Modest Kolerov [the Russian presidential administration official in charge of regional relations] about, for example, Georgia?s neutrality, [this representative of a Georgian party] is obliged to make public statement about it: when this meeting took place and what was discussed at the meeting,? Akaki Minashvili, Executive Director of Liberty Institute said.

The Liberty Institutes initiative follows a decision of the ruling majority in the Georgian Parliament to turn down an opposition-sponsored draft law on lustration that would exclude former Communist Party functionaries and officers of and collaborators of the ex-Soviet secret service KGB from serving in Georgian state structures.

Lawmakers from the ruling National Movement party argued that the proposed draft law would have been ineffective.

Opposition lawmakers claim that the Liberty Institute initiative is a tactical move by the authorities aimed to draw out the process of adopting a lustration law.

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