
Public Defender: Once Compromise Candidate Becomes a Contentious Figure
It has been almost two years since Levan Ioseliani took up the office of the Public Defender of Georgia. His tenure has been marked by controversy, with his positions on key issues fueling debate and drawing criticism from inside and outside his office. Recent statements by Ioseliani on topics such as the October 26 elections, police brutality, and mistreatment of protesters have been decried by CSOs and demonstrators.
Contested Appointment: ‘A Political Compromise’
When, on March 7, 2023, the Georgian Parliament chose Levan Ioseliani as Public Defender with 96 votes, only six over the necessary threshold, this was billed as a necessary political compromise. Ioseliani was the Vice-Speaker of the Parliament but not a member of the ruling Georgian Dream party.
Ioseliani, a 44-year-old lawyer, represented the small party Citizens, which seated only one other MP—party leader Aleko Elisashvili. The party periodically criticized GD but did not fully align with the opposition. Irakli Kobakhidze, who served as the GD chair back then, explained that “this compromise was necessary for our country from various points of view.”
Fulfilling one of the European Commission’s 12 recommendations for getting the candidacy was at the top of that list of political expediency. Previously, in December 2022, the GD torpedoed the civil society candidates backed by the opposition, and the decision floundered just as the clock was ticking on a critical decision in Brussels.
But with Ioseliani, GD was happy. Then Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said, “Ioseliani’s candidacy is absolutely acceptable to us.”
Yet most of the opposition and human rights watchdogs were critical. A group of 16 local civil society organizations made a joint statement prior to Ioseliani’s election, describing it as “conducted without public involvement and participation, which is inconsistent with Recommendation 12 of the European Union, violates the Paris Principles adopted by the United Nations, and has no public trust.” The CSOs also expressed concern about “electing a politician to the main human rights position of the country” and stated that it was “completely contrary” to the recommendations of the UN and the EU.
What helped Ioseliani scrape through the vote was the support of three outspoken opposition MPs—Khatuna Samnidze, Tamar Kordzaia, and Teona Akubardia, who voted in favor. Campaigning aggressively for the EU, they did echo some reservations about Ioseliani. Still, they said the candidacy was preferable compared to some candidates who were more closely aligned with GD and made palatable by the bonus of fulfilling one of the EC conditions.
As many from the opposition protested, Ioseliani expressed his gratitude to three female MPs, who, in his words, “withstood unprecedented pressure [from opposition and CSOs] not to vote for me for a week .”
Critical test: Position on Foreign Agents Law
Thus, since his contested election, Ioseliani has been saddled with straddling the growing abyss that the ruling party is increasingly digging with civil society and opposition. Meanwhile, it increasingly seemed to most observers that the GD was not seriously interested in fulfilling the EC recommendations.
The critical test came after GD proposed the controversial Foreign Agents Law in 2023. Its repressive spirit – the law was termed “The Russian Law” by the opponents, and the name stuck – was in direct contravention of EU principles but in alignment with the Kremlin’s approach.
As CSOs and the public exploded in outrage, Ioseliani diverged from GD but not as decisively as many would have liked. During the hearings for his appointment, Ioseliani said he would have wanted to see the proposed legislation recalled, saying, “I am opposing this law by all means in the Parliament and will [also do so] if elected Public Defender, within the scope of Public Defender’s responsibilities, such as appealing the Constitutional Court.”
Yet, in what would become a defining trait of his term, Ioseliani was late to respond to police violence against the protesters on March 7-9. Convening a press conference on March 13, he said the police dispersal of the protest was “unlawful” and “a criminal act.”
In 2023, GD was forced to vote down the law under public pressure. But in 2024 the ruling party brought it back and rammed it through the Parliament.
This time, Ioseliani did not attack the law on principle but on details. Ahead of the final third reading, Ioseliani urged the Parliament to pursue “alternative solutions” to achieve the stated goal of increased CSO transparency. “The Public Defender of Georgia once again calls on the Parliament of Georgia to achieve the goal of transparency by amending the proposed bill or existing legislation and to refrain from adopting the Georgian law ‘On the Transparency of Foreign Influence’ in this form,” he said.
After the law was passed, Ioseliani challenged the Minister of Justice’s implementation decree in August 2024, arguing that it posed “risks of discrimination and arbitrary action by the state.” In an Amicus Curiae brief to the Constitutional Court in August 2024, his office stated that the law “singles out a certain group of organizations and attributes a new status to them, which results in stigmatizing the organizations based on foreign funding and hinders their work.”
Georgian non-governmental organizations thought this was too little, too late. In their mind, no amendments or modifications to the agents’ law could “embellish it” or mitigate its anticipated destructive consequences. More than 400 CSOs issued a joint statement “categorically opposing” the ruling party bill on foreign agents and called on the GD government to withdraw it.
Political Crisis and Public Rebuke
In the aftermath of the October 26 Parliamentary elections, watchdogs and the opposition recorded fraud and alleged their results were illegitimate. As the critical international reports came in, Ioseliani argued he did not have the constitutional competency to discuss the legitimacy of the elections.
The opposition boycotted the first session of the new parliament in November 2024, and just as its legitimacy was being challenged in the Constitutional Court by the opposition and President Salome Zurabishvili, the Public Defender, nonetheless endorsed the session. He said that “the Georgian Parliament convened absolutely legitimately” and further cited Article 38 of the Constitution, emphasizing that “the Parliament should be convened no later than ten days after the CEC [Central Election Commission] announces the final results.”
Such a position sparked a rare public rebuke from the Public Defender’s Office itself with 34 staff members issuing a statement: “We, the employees of the Public Defender’s Office, have been and remain loyal to the people, state interests, and the basic principles of [this] constitutional body. … We regret that the Public Defender is involved in such a process, which violates the constitutional-legal order and damages the trust in the Public Defender’s Office as an independent constitutional body.”
During a contentious interview on TV Pirveli, hosted by Diana Trapaidze, Ioseliani dismissed claims of election fraud, asserting: “I would definitely change my position if I saw evidence confirming the falsification… 100,000 people whose ID cards were allegedly taken away, none of them came to me. I don’t believe nonsense brought from thin air.” He further noted that election monitoring was beyond the scope of his mandate.
The former Deputy Ombudsman, Giorgi Burjanadze, said Ioseliani was tying his own hands behind his back by misinterpreting the mandate. Burjanadze wrote in a Facebook post: “In reality, the Public Defender has the mandate to oversee the constitutionality of elections, and not knowing this is already incompetence. This power is the only one directly written in the Constitution, and the rest is in the Organic Law. Incidentally, the [previous] fifth Public Defender of Georgia prepared a special report on certain elections.”
Saba Brachveli, formerly a lawyer at the Public Defender’s Office and now a legal expert with the Civil Society Foundation, also slammed Ioseliani’s stance and argued that Ioseliani ignored his staff’s work and misinterpreted the scope of his responsibilities. According to Brachveli, previous Public Defenders had monitored elections, particularly within penitentiary facilities, and their findings had even led to the cancellation of the entire polling station’s results. Brachveli accused Ioseliani of failing to step up, saying, “While Ioseliani avoids responsibility by saying it’s not in his mandate, he claims he couldn’t find evidence of vote rigging. The OSCE/ODIHR [election observers] saw it, the IRI saw it, all the local monitoring organizations saw it, but Ioseliani couldn’t”.
Crisis of Legitimacy: Protests and Police Brutality
On October 28, the GD PM Kobakhidze announced the decision to stop EU accession, sparking mass protests that were subdued by police violence. The Public Defender’s voice was crucial in determining the scale of the use of disproportionate force by the police when speaking on December 2, Ioseliani pointed out that 80% of the detainees visited by his office showed signs of violence. As the state institutions are suffering from the acute crisis of legitimacy, Ioseliani became the key counterpart for international delegations seeking a politically neutral counterpart.
Even as the office regularly briefs on “disturbing” methods used by the police against citizens, Ioseliani is often seen as bending under political pressure and refusing to confront GD’s authoritarian drift.
In the same January 17 TV interview, Ioseliani claimed that the torture and inhumane treatment of protesters by the police was “not systemic.” Ioseliani argued that just because there were multiple individual cases, it doesn’t necessarily mean that torture was a systemic problem.
Burjanadze alleged that Ioseliani was attempting to downplay the issue just when the “recognition of the Georgian parliamentary delegation’s credentials is to be decided” at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. “This constitutes inadequate performance of duties on his part, confirming his political bias and the lack of independence,” Burjanadze added.
The protesters responded to the interview by bringing two boxes filled with evidence of alleged election fraud and systematic police abuse during pro-EU rallies, alongside the photographs of beaten citizens, to the Public Defender’s office. They carried banners labeling Ioseliani as “Public Defender of the Regime.” One brought a funeral wreath, symbolizing their belief that “Ioseliani has buried the Public Defender’s institution in Georgia.”
Brachveli slammed Ioseliani for sitting down with the propagandist POSTV channel hosts, saying: “The fascist forces, who always considered the Public Defender’s Office as the main enemy, now see the impostor at the head of this institution as a like-minded man. Ioseliani is a defender of abusers and propagandists.”
Cornered Defender: Ioseliani’s Reaction
Ioseliani responded to criticisms on Facebook, saying some critics “are deliberately spreading misinformation, while others are likely misinformed.”
Trying to defend his previous position, he said, “I cannot assess the issue of election fraud, as I do not represent any observation organization. It is my right to trust the conclusions of the OSCE/ODIHR.” He particularly emphasized his skepticism of widespread fraud claims. “I do not believe [opposition claims] that 100,000 people had their ID cards taken away. If this were true, at least half would have been at the protests,” casting doubt at the scale of unfolding resistance to GD.
He also dismissed criticism from the former staff about being lax on police brutality and addressed critics: “Stop tagging, defaming, and pressuring [our] staff members; you’re not the most popular people here,” said Ioseliani, ostensibly addressing Brachveli and Burjanadze.
Yet the criticism seems to carry some weight, as Ioseliani seemed to flip his position on police brutality once again by January 20, arguing “the improper treatment had a systemic nature, which includes various types of crimes, including torture, threats of torture, and inhumane treatment. In each specific case, it should be determined which one occurred.”
Legalistic nitpicking or the forced reversal of position? It is hard to say. What is clear is that Ioseliani would like to leave the politically supercharged topics behind and construct his own human rights agenda closer to his past partisan preferences – social and housing issues.
After visiting a social housing facility in Gori, Ioseliani said, “I am the first public defender in Georgia’s history who has visited every social housing facility and shelter, knows everyone’s problems, speaks publicly about everything, and does not lie.”
He had, but a disdain for his detractors: “This institution will not survive on the whims of a few activists, who mainly introduced themselves by using foul language and hate speech. You will have to get used to this – for the next four years.”
Also Read:
- 16/01/2025 – Public Defender Tells Court Amaghlobeli’s Detention Unjustified
- 13/12/2024 – Public Defender Says Rump GD Parliament Legislates without Consultation, Limits Human Rights
- 02/12/2024 – Public Defender: “Alarming” 80% of Detainees Report Mistreatment, Violence by Police”
- 26/11/2024 – Public Defender Rebuked By His Office for Claiming Parliament is Legitimate
- 25/04/2024 – Ombudsman Report 2023: Violent Attack on Pride “Could Not Be Prevented”
- 11/12/2023 – Public Defender Addresses Human Rights Challenges in Georgia on the International Human Rights Day