Today, Friday, the Georgian parliament rejected the controversial bill on the classification of non-governmental organizations.
Yesterday, Thursday, the Georgian president saluted “the demonstrators’ victory over the government” after the law was withdrawn by the country’s ruling party.
Before the parliament’s response, the ruling party had announced the withdrawal of a bill threatening the work of the media and non-governmental organizations, which sparked large protests during the past two days that were severely suppressed in this Caucasian country.
The “Georgian Dream” party said in a statement posted on its website: “As a government party responsible to every member of society, we have decided without conditions to withdraw this law that we support.”
In this context, the Kremlin on Friday accused the United States of inflaming anti-Russian sentiment among thousands of protesters who took to the streets of Georgia this week.
Referring to a statement made by Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili from New York Thursday in support of the demonstrators, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “She speaks to her people not from Georgia, but from America,” considering that a “visible hand” is working to “stir up an anti-Russian feeling.” .
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the demonstrations in Georgia this week as an “attempt to change the regime by force,” referring to the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, which Moscow considers a Western-orchestrated coup attempt.
“It’s very similar to the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev,” Sergei Lavrov told Russian television.
He considered the Georgian draft law on “foreign agents”, which was inspired by a Russian text and sparked a wave of protests, as “a pretext to launch an attempt to change the regime by force.”
Rejection of the law
This announcement comes in the wake of huge demonstrations in the capital, Tbilisi, during which the police used tear gas canisters and water cannons to disperse tens of thousands of demonstrators who gathered in front of Parliament.
The protest movement erupted after the adoption of a draft law on Tuesday in the first reading stipulating that non-governmental organizations and media that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad are obliged to register as “foreign agents” under penalty of a fine.
For its critics, the law is reminiscent of Russian legislation the Kremlin uses to crack down on independent journalism, human rights organizations and its opponents.
For its part, the “Georgian Dream” party considered in its statement that the bill was “presented on a bad day in a misleading way,” indicating that it would start public consultations to “better explain” the purpose of this text.
Thus, the ruling party does not completely close the door to a future return of this bill to Parliament.
This former Soviet republic, which witnessed Russia’s military intervention in 2008, aspires to formally join the European Union and NATO, a trend taken after the “Rose Revolution” in 2003.
