The Daily Beat: 6 March
In an interview with Rustavi 2 TV, Speaker Shalva Papuashvili backed the ruling Georgia Dream party’s intention to pass the legislation to fight “pseudo-liberal ideology” and “LGBT propaganda,” saying that one can’t choose gender as it is the case for age, adding that there are only two genders – female and male. “You can say I wish I were 20 now, why aren’t you? Because this is anatomy, and the same is for gender… this has nothing to do with lifestyle; this is biology, biological markers are biological markers, a person is either like this or not…,” said Speaker Papuashvili, who until now was widely known as a “prominent critic” of the CSOs and their foreign donors.
A proposed bill aimed at combating “pseudo-liberal ideology” and “LGBT propaganda” has every indication that the ruling Georgian Dream party is mounting homophobia as an early pillar of its parliamentary election campaign. At the same time, its rhetoric bears uncanny similarity with Russian and Hungarian legislation adopted earlier. In the following piece, Civil.ge delves into the proposed bill that could frame the electoral environment, thus affecting the country’s European integration.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for two high-ranking Russian commanders, Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash and Admiral Viktor Sokolov, on charges of war crimes allegedly committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. One of these men, Lieutenant General Sergei Kobylash, made his name in the 2008 Russo-Georgia war for carrying out bombing raids on Georgian cities as a military pilot and commander of the 368th Assault Aviation Regiment.
On the second day of his first visit to Georgia, Iceland’s President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson met with Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze andSpeaker Shalva Papuashvili to discuss the prospects of bilateral relations, with a particular emphasis on economy, energy, trade, tourism, and innovation. Iceland’s president also attended the Georgia-Iceland business forum and visited the occupation line near South Ossetia.
At the meeting with the media representatives, President Salome Zurabishvili pledged to remain in office until the end of her constitutional mandate, dispelling the rumors that she would resign and lead the opposition in the upcoming parliamentary elections. Among other issues, President Zurabishvili also spoke of possible Russian meddling in the upcoming parliamentary elections, Georgia’s foreign and security policy, ex-President Saakashvili, and the importance of consolidating pro-European political forces.
