Civil Society Organizations Present a Plan for Georgia’s EU Future
By Liza Mchedlidze
Monday, July 4, 2022
Representatives of civil organizations presented a plan regarding the implementation of the 12-point requirements plan presented to Georgia by the European Commission.
Director of Fair Elections, Nino Dolidze, said that the existence of political will is necessary to implement the mentioned plan.
According to her, the plan presented by the government a few days ago on how to get candidate status was only procedural issues and the information about the working groups was disclosed. Also, there were no specific steps mentioned in the statement made by Irakli Kobakhidze.
“We think that this will be another formal process that will take time, and in the end we will not be able to take the steps that Georgia needs today in 6 months.
That's why we present a plan on what to do to get candidate status.
First, what we see in the recommendations is political polarization. In this regard, we think we should go back to Charles Michel's document, where it was well written that in order to achieve depolarization, power should be distributed and balanced in the Parliament of Georgia - for example, 5 committees should be chaired by the opposition, including 2 such as budgetary ones. It doesn't take much time and is very easy to do. In case of political will, this is easily possible.
Constitutional amendments are also important , on which 1 hearing has already been held and it needs 2 more hearings to be adopted, this is also easy to do.
In addition, it is very important to change the electoral legislation, which refers to the independence of the CEC , its chairman and professional members based on consensus. This will be the main thing in order to raise public confidence in the elections.
One of the main issues is justice reform , and we have presented a plan on how to implement it.
It is very easy to reform the Supreme Council of Justice or to elect the remaining non-judge members of the Supreme Council of Justice.
We have also presented a vision regarding the fight against corruption - an agency should be created that will unite the mechanisms of fighting corruption in various agencies and will be more effective.
We have the rest of the vision regarding all the points, which will ultimately lead to the 5th point, which is de -oligarchization, that is, the weakening of the oligarch and his rule. This will not completely end oligarchic rule, but it will weaken it.
Ultimately, according to a specific plan, if there is political will, everything is very easily achievable. This does not require the creation of working groups or prolonging the process, but by taking specific steps, it is possible to implement this plan,” stated Nino Dolidze.
