Parliament starts discussing 6 candidates for the Supreme Court
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Tuesday, January 14
Parliament of Georgia starts discussing six candidates for the Supreme Court. A few days ago, the Parliamentary Bureau sent the list submitted by the High Council of Justice to the Committee on Legal Affairs.
The list of Supreme Court Judges includes, Ilona Todua, Genadi Makaridze, Nino Sandodze, Paata Silagadze, Giorgi Tkavadze and Tea Dzimistarashvili.
The list also includes candidates who were rejected by the council of justice during previous interviews. Six of them were among 50 candidates backed by secret ballot in the first round of selection. Paata Silagadze was one of the 20 candidates to be selected as supreme court judges for a lifetime, but he was not chosen in the end.
As for the rest of the candidates, Nino Sandodze and Giorgi Tkavadze were among the 10-member list of judges compiled by the High Council of Justice in 2018. In December 2018, the 10-member list of Supreme Court nominees was followed by political controversy in both the parliamentary majority, the opposition, and the non-governmental sector. Following the confrontation, MPs Eka Beselia and Gedevan Popkhadze left the ruling team.
Georgia already has 14 judges appointed to the Supreme Court for life. The approval of the judges was followed by rallies and protests, where police arrested 16 people, including activists and members of the opposition.
Just a few minutes before the ballot was disrupted, an unknown substance was thrown into the plenary hall; some people became ill. For this reason, lawmakers left the session hall and the voting was postponed for several hours.
One of the Georgian Dream lawmakers described the attack as a terrorist act, while others described it as a chemical attack. The vote was still held, and the Georgian Dream approved the list of judges.
Apart from the opposition and civil society, the process of appointing judges has also received criticism from international organizations.
Due to the importance of the selection process and the high interest of the society in this topic, The Public Defender of Georgia addressed OSCE/ODIHR and requested that they monitor the process.
According to OSCE/ODIHR assessments, there were violations at the interview, election and voting stages, and the report also addressed the issue of judges' qualifications. Only the ruling team was satisfied with the choice.
The ODIHR report read that the candidates were treated unequally, the transparency was limited and the interviews with the applicants were ‘highly disorganized,’ because “High Council of Justice (HCJ) did not adopt rules of procedure or a code of conduct for the hearings to ensure a fair and orderly process.”
Yesterday, a member of the ruling party and former Chairperson of the Parliament, Irakli Kobakhidze disapproved of the findings of OSCE/ODIHR and said that there were some mistakes in the report.
“Harsh, factual, technical and contextual inaccuracies are rooted in this conclusion. I don’t know what the reason behind this could be,” said Kobakhidze.
Aside from ODIHR, VC and PACE, independent experts and non-governmental organisations have been exceptionally critical and found gross failings in the selection process.
