2017-09-26
Today is a very important day as the Parliament will vote through third hearing for the country's fundamental document, the Constitution of Georgia.
This document has been developed through unprecedented all-encompassing public debates and engagement.
Unfortunately, the opposition is trying to pass it off as a document from only one party, which it is not at all, because different parties, experts, and non-governmental organizations participated in said debates. This process in itself was unprecedented because, we all witnessed under the rule of the parties-who now accuse us of a lack for, or complete absence, of consensus-constitutions adopted in Georgia without anything remotely resembling the recent debates.
The document adopted by us is assessed by the Venice Commission as follows, and I quote: "[The document is] based on the principles of democracy, the rule of law and the protection of fundamental rights." It is very important that the Venice Commission sees this document as a step forward in the evolution of Georgian democracy, and we can be proud of this document, which significantly ensures balance of powers, rests upon a strong parliament, an effective government, an independent judiciary, and a nonpartisan president.
There are a number of very important amendments that I will not list here. As the last resort to reach a consensus, we agreed to very important issues, such as one more direct presidential election for six years, not five, so that as we switch to proportional representation in 2014, president may be elected through indirect election. Adopting proportional representation alone is a giant leap on the path of the country's democratic development. For years, it remained impossible and an unfulfilled dream for all oppositions, who have ever been part of the opposition, which is also noteworthy.
The last step was lowering the threshold from five to three percent for 2020, for one more parliamentary election, and the suspension of the abolition of blocs for the tenure of one more parliament. In other words, party blocs will be allowed during the 2020 elections.
In addition, very important issues were embedded in the Constitution, such as the prohibition of alienation of agricultural land to non-citizens, significantly enhanced rights of the parliamentary opposition, including the right to establish a parliamentary investigative commission, greater social responsibility of the state and enhanced quality of protection of labor rights, also enshrining the country's foreign policy choice in provisional clauses, and the definition of marriage in response to the demand from a large segment of society.
Thus, we can state with all assuredness that the Constitution we are about to adopt fully meets the requests of our society and the agenda of the country's development.
I very much hope that after voting through third hearing, we will have a document that embodies an important step toward the country's democratic development.
We must do our best to explain to our international partners the nature of the process we are going through now. This is a vitally important process and the crucial steps taken by the ruling party in this direction are historically unprecedented. We made some very important forthcoming steps throughout the process of constitutional debates and even after the conclusion thereof in order to strike a balance between interests. That a certain part of the opposition is trying to present this process in a different light does not mean that we are dealing with an unbalanced constitution here. The very essence of the amendments we are about to adopt today in the form of the new Constitution are extremely democratic. Many people have fought for many years to have this type of amendments, but never managed to move forward even a bit under the previous government.
The Constitution guiding our lives today is a constitution adopted by only one party and tailored to suit the interests of one person. Today we are about to free ourselves of this legacy as we are about to adopt a genuinely democratic Constitution.
Prime Minister's Press Office