POLITICS

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OP-ED BY NUGZAR B. RUHADZE

Media was invented to serve the people. And serving the people means keeping them at ease and content by means of having reliable and wide ranging information services at their disposal when needed. In that way, the average person on the street can make the right decision at the right time, based on the received info. It is the conventional truth that an educated voter is a huge asset to a nation, but we will never have a knowledgeable voter, contemplating his or her political choice in front of a ballot box, unless the media feeds truthful and accurate information to that priceless part of our population.

Do we have in Georgia a strong corps of functioning professionals who would meet the informational wants and needs of our public with resolute fairness and intelligence? We could respond with a fi rm yes to this question, unless our entire strong, vigorous and pushy bunch of journalists was biased either to one side of the political aisle or the other. A minor footnote: speaking about the public, I would give it a qualifi cation of people who have in the last 30 years been waiting for some cultural, sociopolitical and economic miracle to happen, which is not arriving very precipitously in this land. Thus, we are faced with a strange dichotomy working to the detriment of this nation: a public who is frustrated, nervous and not very well versed in matters electoral on the one hand, and the youngish, predisposed and furiously two-faced media on the other. So the expectancy of a healthy electoral decision is under the burden of a very bad misgiving. The media don’t prepare the public to make the best decisions during the polls, it only manipulates the voters’ hearts and minds in expectation of their favorite politicians to grab points, hence doing a disservice to democracy, the local community, businesses and other segments of our society, including the government.

Meanwhile, our right to know is being impaired, turning all of us into a doubtful and hesitating category of voters. Certainly, the public has free access to an abundance of information, although limited in versatility and sincerity- entertaining readers, listeners and viewers to the extent of vertiginous exhaustion. Against the described media-publicinteraction background, our politicians are doing their affordable utmost to let us take in their ideas archaic, and their promises stinking with bygone odors, all this presented in the same strenuous but very tiring vocabulary, and lively but angry and irritating tone. They no longer excite our public with political novelties that might encourage us to fall in love with them and jump on their respective bandwagons. The impression is that all of them have forgotten how to serve the public tastes and longings, having fallen out of favor massively.

The country is literally infested with modern communications media of all sorts and directions, and the politicians are successfully using their services, each in their own way. Only, they are concentrating on our population’s interests, needs and desires with formal and unpersuasive verbosity.

Our right to know more and better is one of the greatest achievements of the new era, and we certainly do enjoy this right to its full extent, but at the same time, it has become almost impossible to discern right from wrong, and to distinguish truth from lie in the electoral campaign, which is the greatest impediment in the process of making the most optimal decision at the sacred moment of holding the difference-making voting paper in hand, poised over the ballot box.

The hysterical style, perpetuated in our political life in general and in media operations in particular, is not a helper in the endeavor of the already weathered people of Georgia in the post-soviet struggle for survival. Georgians love to be educated, and they readily accept their teachers and instructors of new democratic ways and means, but the academic process here defi es the chance of acquiring a modern political education conducive to a free and fair electoral environment, and this might be one of the reasons for that zealousness among the politicians, much callousness in the public and much unnecessary fuss in the media.

Our Right to Know

US Embassy: Failure to Approve Constitutional Amendment Another Missed Opportunity for Georgia’s Judiciary

BY ANA DUMBADZE

Parliament’s failure to approve the Constitutional amendment aimed at ensuring broad, multi-party support for an impartial Prosecutor General is another missed opportunity to increase the independence, transparency and integrity of Georgia’s judiciary, reads the statement issued by the US Embassy in Tbilisi.

The US Embassy says judicial reform is essential for Georgia’s European integration.

“The proposed change in the appointment process was recommended for Georgia by the Venice Commission, an international body of legal experts, in a report requested by Parliament, as well as other international experts. Equally as important, all of the political parties that signed the April 19 Agreement, including Georgian Dream, committed to make this change, to increase the public’s confi dence in the independence of the Prosecutor General from political interference.

“We take note of opposition leaders’ comments that they were unable to support this important amendment to the Prosecutor General appointment process in order to retain the ruling party’s votes for the other important Constitutional amendments called for in the April 19 Agreement, which pertain to fully proportional elections, a two percent threshold, and factions. Georgian Dream’s refusal to support the Prosecutor General amendment contradicts the party’s July 28 reiteration of its commitment to implement the judicial reforms and adopt the Constitutional amendments laid out in the April 19 Agreement. This is yet another broken promise by the ruling party to make the much-needed judicial reforms that Georgian Dream and opposition party leaders have pledged, of their own accord, to adopt.

“The people of Georgia deserve an impartial, independent judiciary that is not used for political purposes. With an impartial judicial system, the public can have confi dence that election results will be upheld fairly, business disputes will be resolved without favoritism, and political opponents will not be targeted unjustly for prosecution. Those qualifi ed professionals in the Prosecutor’s Offi ce, and the court system more broadly, should be allowed to uphold the law without political pressure. The Constitutional amendment reforming the appointment process for the Prosecutor General would have been an important step toward that goal.

“Georgian Dream and opposition parties pledged to renew their efforts to work together in Parliament in good faith to implement key reforms to the judicial system. They should follow through on their commitment to conduct an inclusive, multi-party assessment of the previous waves of judicial reform and develop initiatives that will further improve judicial transparency, impartiality, and accountability. These reforms are essential for Georgia’s European integration and, more importantly, for ensuring the people of Georgia have the impartial, professional justice system they deserve,” reads the statement.

“The European Union regrets that yet another commitment to reform the Judiciary was not upheld today,” stated Ambassador of the European Union to Georgia Carl Hartzell in connection with constitutional amendments passed in the fi rst reading in the Georgian Parliament.

“Today, the Georgian Parliament voted in fi rst reading on a number of important constitutional amendments that were tabled following the 19 April Agreement mediated by the European Union. Unfortunately, the key amendment on the election modalities of the Prosecutor General of Georgia was withdrawn.

“This amendment was due to address the way in which the Prosecutor General of Georgia is appointed, with the ambition to increase the required majority to a qualifi ed majority, in order to ensure the broadest, cross-party support for appointments and to reduce the risk that one party can, alone, appoint a Prosecutor General in the future. This was another measure aimed to increase the independence, transparency and quality of the Judiciary in Georgia. The principles behind this amendment have been a long-standing Venice Commission recommendation. Following Georgian Dream’s withdrawal from the 19 April Agreement, we also took note of the Party’s renewed and public commitment on 28 July, to nevertheless implement the judicial reforms and adopt the initiated constitutional amendments.

“The European Union regrets that yet another commitment to reform the Judiciary was not upheld today. We recall that last July, further appointments to the Supreme Court, alongside those made over the past two years, were assessed by the OSCE/ODIHR “to lack integrity, objectivity and credibility”. Last week, in the context of the non-disbursement of 75 million Euro in EU macro-fi nancial assistance, the EU noted that Georgia failed to suffi ciently address the condition for this macro-fi nancial assistance, and notably to increase the independence, accountability and quality of the judicial system. Today’s withdrawal of the amendment is therefore a third setback within only two months, in terms of Georgia’s commitments to reform its Judiciary,” Hartzell said.

On September 7, Parliament passed the planned amendments to the constitutional law with 126 votes in the fi rst reading. At the initiative and decision of the ruling majority, the bill was put to a vote without the clause that provides for the election of the Prosecutor General by a qualifi ed majority – three-fi fths of the full membership of Parliament.

With this move, the ruling team rejected another condition provided by the agreement of the President of the European Council Charles Michel.

According to the draft, based on the next two parliamentary elections, the seats of the members of parliament will be distributed to the political parties that receive 2% of the votes.

PM: Peace, Stability and Prosperity, Three Words that Unite the Countries of this Region

BY KETEVAN SKHIRTLADZE

Iwould like to summarize our common regional goal in three words – peace, stability, and prosperity, which unites us, all three countries, the countries of the region, stated Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili at a briefi ng during Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to Georgia on September 8.

The PM congratulated Pashinyan on winning the elections and noted that this is a good opportunity to start a new era for Armenia and the Armenian people.

“The Karabakh War was certainly a real challenge for our region, but now that I have become familiar with the Prime Minister’s new vision, I believe that this challenge will be transformed into a new opportunity, an opportunity that will bring prosperity to Armenia and the Armenian people. I would also like to say that the stability of Armenia is very important for us, both politically and economically, and it is directly related to the stability of our country and the region in general. Therefore, I would like to put our common regional goal in three words – it is peace, stability, and prosperity, which unites all three countries of the region,” he said.

Nikol Pashinyan thanked Garibashvili for his support of the return of 15 Armenian prisoners in June.

“I joke that during these two days I had more contact with the Prime Minister of Georgia than with our voters during the pre-election period. It was very important to establish a new level of personal relations and the atmosphere created in those days is a very good basis for more fruitful relations between our countries and government,” Pashinyan noted.