PM Defends Foreign Agents Bill, Lashes Out at CSOs
On April 8, the Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Kobakhidze defended the re-tabled Foreign Agents law at the executive Government meeting, claiming that the draft is “sound” and “entirely thought-through” and it merely envisages the annual reporting on financial performance of NGOs and respective media outlets. PM Kobakhidze also attacked CSOs-Factcheck and Myth Detector, for engaging in the “censorship” of the GD-disseminated content regarding the draft law on social media.
“If you watch debates, you must have noticed that nobody can argument why transparency is bad,” PM Kobakhidze said, adding that “last year they managed to deceive a significant part of the society jeopardizing the values. Nevertheless, I am confident that they will no longer be able to do so.”
Prime Minister Kobakhidze said he believes that there is a lack of transparency in the work of NGOs, leaving society uninformed about who is being funded and for what purposes. “Misleading information is being spread as if the government and public institutions have access to information on NGO funding even now. This is not true! We have extracted information on 7 NGOs… it turns out that since 2012, they declared only about 18% of their expenditures,” disclosing no information about the purpose and the sources of the finances, according to the PM. He also claimed that the bulk of NGO expenses is not reported to the Ministry of Finance at all.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Kobakhidze further criticized Georgian civil society organizations engaged in fact-checking on Facebook, Myth Detector and Factcheck, accusing them of practicing “censorship”. He was in particular referring to the labeling of GD-disseminated content on the Foreign Agents Law as “false information” by Facebook, and said that the incident “proves their [those against the Foreign Agents law] style and values, i.e. lack of transparency” and “censorship is Europe for these people.”
Also Read:
- 08/04/2024 – More than 400 CSOs Denounce Foreign Agents Bill
- 08/04/2024 – PM Announces Large Tax Debt Relief Ahead of Elections
This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)
