Parliament Fails to Reconvene After Summer Recess Due to Lack of Quorum

Outgoing Parliament, which was supposed to hold its final session before usual break one month before the elections, failed to reconvene after the summer recess on September 7 because of lack of quorum.

Only 30 lawmakers, far less than required minimum of 76, were present in the chamber.

UNM lawmakers have been boycotting parliamentary sessions since violent incident in the village of Kortskheli in May.

Many of the lawmakers from the GDDG ruling party were also absent.

MP Gia Volski, who chairs GDDG group in the outgoing Parliament, said on September 6 that holding of the session was less likely because most of the MPs were engaged in ongoing electoral campaign. He also suggested that there was no sense in gathering for a session as former Georgian Dream coalition partners were now opponents and it would have been impossible to reach an agreement and hold votes on various issues, which were on the agenda.

Election of new judges for the Supreme Court was among the issues on the agenda of the failed session.

Three seats in the Supreme Court remain vacant for months already. In June the Parliament voted down Supreme Court nominees, named by President Giorgi Margvelashvili, as most of the ruling GDDG party MPs refused to support them. The President re-nominated two candidates – Nona Todua and Tamar Laliashvili, and nominated deputy secretary of the National Security Council Levan Bodzashvili for the third vacant seat.

Package of bills known as the “third wave of the judicial reforms” was also on the agenda of the failed session.

It will be now up to the new parliament, which will be elected in the October 8 polls, to address these issues as the outgoing Parliament is not expected to be reconvened. Legislative body in Georgia usually suspends sessions one month before the elections.

“I would like to wish that the next Parliament, which will be elected in the October elections, will carry its responsibility appropriately from the day one to its final day and our citizens will not have a sense that MPs elected by them are failing to perform their duties,” said speaker of the outgoing parliament, Davit Usupashvili of the Republican Party.