Parlament Gruzji [Parliament of Georgia]

2021

Post-Election political standstill, flawed electoral complaint practices, and the one-party parliament, 2020

The second round of elections cemented the victory of the Georgian Dream (GD). Despite the opposition boycotting the elections, violations persisted. The first session of the Parliament convened in absence of the opposition and parties saw some annulling of their mandates. The DG pledge for an early election if there was one percent deviation in its favour, did not go forward. The statistical analysis corroborated some of the observers’ findings, highlighting trends of discrepancies. The court practices also indicated political bias and undue consideration of complaints and appeals.

2012

The purpose of this article is to review the main constitutional reforms and amendments that occurred in the previous years in Georgia, their causes and consequences, which are the result of each fundamental transformation. Particular attention will be paid to procedural, substantial, political and legal aspects of implementation of the constitutional amendments, as well as the social background, which accompany each constitutional amendment. Systemic problems and causes will be analysed to enable proper decision making based on this experience in the future, risk prevention and implementation of real function by the constitution.

International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2020

Since its original adoption, 33 amendments have been made to the Constitution of Georgia (the “Constitution”). Of those amendments, the constitutional model was substantially changed in 2004 and 2010, initially from a presidential to a presidential-parliamentary subtype of the semi-presidential model, and afterwards to a prime-minister-president subtype of the semi-presidential model. The supreme law of Georgia has never been totally free of heretical deviations from the principles of constitutionalism, neither during its adoption nor after reforms. However, the supreme law was often not what the ruling powers sought to change. The reasons for this lie in the lack of legitimacy of the present Constitution. No matter how intense the doctrinal criticism of the 2010 constitutional reform, initiation of large-scale revision of the Constitution was made possible by the current Constitution’s lack of political legitimacy. This is clearly demonstrated by the attitude of the current government, which holds that the previous reform was motivated by the then-president’s desire to maintain power and thus current model is illegitimate. In accordance with established practice in Georgia, large-scale revision of the Constitution is preceded by the creation of a constitutional commission, the purpose of which is to ensure the representational involvement of the public in preparing the draft amendments. The case of 2004 is an exception; in that case, reform was carried out by the government that came to power as a result of the Rose Revolution. The current State Constitutional Commission of Georgia (the “Commission”) is the fourth in the country’s history. The Commission was created by the Parliament of Georgia on 15 December 2016 and tasked with preparing a draft revision of the Constitution that will “ensure the full compliance of the Constitution with the fundamental principles of the constitutional law and establishment of the constitutional system corresponding to the long-term democratic development interests of the country.” The Commission finalized its work and on 22 April 2017 approved the draft Constitution with 43 votes to 8. The present article addresses the current document, which at the time of writing is not final and might be changed following Parliamentary hearings. The purpose of this article is to review the constitutional reform process and the organization of the Commission and its work, to briefly describe the political context in which the draft Constitution was prepared and to analyze the main aspects of the draft Constitution. The author of this article is honored to have served as a member of the Constitutional Commission by the quota allocated to the academic community. Consequently, the views presented in this article are the conclusions of an internal observer and participant in the process. This is an advantage – to be at the center of events and aware of all aspects of the process which are not recorded in formal documents. On the other hand, it could be considered a shortcoming: the author’s perception of the constitutional reform process might lack the analytical distance with which to describe the existing situation without any impediments.

pp. 775-821 in S. Berglund, J. Ekman, K. Deegan-Krause & T. Knutsen (eds.) The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe, 3rd edition (2013). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.