Tbilisi: The controversy surrounding the adoption of a foreign agents’ law is likely not to die soon as the matter reaches a constitutional court.
t. A member of Parliament who belonged to the Girchi Party has announced that they will file an independent lawsuit against the foreign agent law to repeal it with immediate effect.
This will increase the total number of lawsuits against the law to three. In their lawsuits all the petitioners have called for the repeal of the law to protect the democratic values of the Georgian constitution. The law has also been termed the Russian law by the leaders of opposition parties as well as the members of non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations.
“Although we will continue our fight against the law. Moreover we will remove this as soon as opposition parties will win the election. However we are free to exercise our right to file the lawsuit in the constitutional court against the law,” as per Roman Gotsiridze. He is the leader of the Euro-Optimists parliamentary group.
It is worth mentioning that Parliamentary Girchi is the only opposition party opposing the law on its own. The party has not joined the collective efforts. According to one of the opposition party leaders “We don’t believe in the independence of the Constitutional Court. Moreover we should be surprised by the optimism of the others who are expecting something bigger with their individual moves.
Just a few days ago the President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili, filed a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court to repeal the law. Soon after the president’s election, 121 civil society and media organizations filed a separate lawsuit against the law with the Constitutional Court requesting to repeal it. The court also denied the suspension of the law’s unconstitutional clauses which may affect the pending cases as well.
Notably, most of the lawsuits have been filed under the provisions of Article 78 of the Georgian Constitution. It allows everyone to do what is necessary so that Georgia’s integration process towards the European Union can be smooth and unhindered.
