Parliamentary Majority Responds to NGO Statement

Chair of the foreign relations parliamentary committee Akaki Minashvili claims CoE recommended to make funding of political parties transparent. However, neither concrete decisions nor any draft-law has been worked out yet.

On October 25, non-governmental organizations published statement about possible prohibition for legal entities to fund political parties. They stated: “Although the civil society vigorously highlighted the problems in the party financing system during past (2008 and 2010) elections, while the GRECO recommendations were published as early as 1 July 2011, the ruling party had not taken them into consideration and they had not been incorporated into the new draft Electoral Code either. We therefore believe that the government’s initiatives in terms of imposing restrictions on party financing could be linked to the recent political developments in Georgia.”

Akaki Minashvili told journalists that NGOs are politically motivated and not the idea itself. He said the recommendation came from the GRECO of the Council of Europe, though the draft-law has not been prepared yet.

Chair of the Georgian parliament’s legal committee Pavle Kublashvili said Georgia received recommendations on June 1, 2011 and he believes various issues should be reviewed. However, Kublashvili added that concrete decision has not been passed yet including funding of political parties by legal entities.

Kublashvili thinks it is not serious to claim that the initiative was politically motivated and is linked with Bidzina Ivanishvili’s factor.

“It is impossible that the CoE relied on political motives and Bidzina Ivanishvili’s factor when drafting recommendations for Georgia on transparent funding,” said Kublashvili.

Kublashvili cannot clarify whether the concrete draft-law will be formed in future and said that concrete decisions have not been made yet.

Interpresnews