Opposition Slams Ruling Party Reaction to Ombudsman’s Report

The response ruling party MPs gave to the public defender’s report in Parliament demonstrates offiical ignorance of human rights problems in the country, the New Rights opposition party said in a statement on July 17.

Ruling party lawmakers attacked Public Defender Sozar Subari, accusing him of “political bias” and “incompetence,” which they said has led “to a discrediting” of the Ombudsman’s Office. The criticism came after the public defender delivered his 2007 report on human rights to Parliament on July 15.

“Such an attitude towards the public defender’s activities by Parliament is nothing but one more confirmation of the non-democratic nature of the authorities,” the New Rights Party said in a written statement. “The Georgian parliament and the authorities respond to cases of violations of human rights and illegalities committed by them not by addressing those problems, but by attacking those institutions and persons, who make them public.”

The New Rights Party said that such an approach would entail a furhter deterioration in the country’s human rights record, making what it called “the establishment of an autocratic regime irreversible.”

“Getting rid of this type of regime, unfortunately, is usually possible only at the expense of destabilizing the country, which is a heavy burden for the people,” it said.

In December 2005, when the public defender delivered his annual report, lawmakers from the New Rights Party, as well as some ruling party lawmakers, walked out in protest at Sozar Subari’s criticism of the concordat between the Georgian Orthodox Church and the state.

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