Burjanadze Weighs into Reemerged Debate on ‘Patriot Act’

Nino Burjanadze, the former parliamentary chairperson and now president of the Foundation for Democracy and Development (FDD), said that a so called patriot act would be unacceptable if it restricted civil liberties.

“I am not familiar with what the government means in respect of this act, or what its content is,” Burjanadze said at a press conference on September 12. “But if this document is somehow linked with restriction of democratic freedoms, restriction of human rights, restriction of freedom of press and freedom of speech, this will only aggravate the political situation in the country; it will derail the processes and speed up the crisis.”

President Saakashvili said on August 29 that Georgia needed, what he called, “a patriot act” to deter possible attempts to overthrow the government through foreign intervention. He said that this act would not restrict democratic freedoms, but refrained from going into details.

Discussions on the matter reemerged on September 12 in the Parliament, although no written document has yet been proposed and there is little information what the potential ‘patriot act’ may imply.

A lawmaker from the ruling party, Giorgi Gabashvili, said it might be some kind of “additional guarantee that Russian aggressors do not have any room for implementing further aggressions through other means” – apparently referring to possible overthrow of the government from within the country.

He, however, also said that “keeping balance” was essential so that to prevent restrictions of civil liberties. “But at the same time,” MP Gabashvili continued, “we should not give any possibility to our enemy to take an upper hand.”

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