Georgian Dream voices support for controversial foreign agents bill

Georgian Dream voices support for controversial foreign agents bill
The foreign agents bill proposes the creation of a government register of organisations and media that receive more than 20% of their financing from abroad. / bne IntelliNews
By bne IntelIiNews February 21, 2023
Georgia’s ruling Georgian Dream party on February 20 announced that it will support a foreign agents bill recently introduced into the country’s parliament.
 
“On behalf of the Georgian Dream faction, I can say that we agreed on principles and will support the bill. Of course, discussion of the details will continue,” said the party’s spokesperson Mamuka Mdinaradze at a press briefing.
 
The foreign agents bill proposes the creation of a government register of organisations and media that receive more than 20% of their financing from abroad. Failure to register as a foreign agent would result in hefty fines.
 
The bill was introduced into Georgia’s parliament by the anti-Western People’s Power faction, formed last year by a group of former Georgian Dream party members.
 
The opposition has accused People’s Power of being a stalking horse for aggressively nationalistic policies that appeal to some of the electorate but would land the ruling party in trouble with the EU if pursued under its own name.
 
People’s Power insists that the foreign agents bill is based on laws enacted in the United States, arguing that it has taken “the best practices from other democratic countries”.
 
But an array of Western officials, journalists, and civil society representatives have rejected this comparison, arguing that the proposed bill bears greater similarity to Russia’s foreign agents law, which the Kremlin has used to crack down on the opposition and muzzle independent media.
 
“In just two years, Georgia has turned from an aspiring member of the European Union and Nato into an anti-Western and even verging on pro-Russian country, one where freedom of speech and freedom of the press is in mortal danger,” wrote journalist and co-founder of OC Media Mariam Nikuradze. 
 
While Georgian Dream looks set to support the foreign agents law,  Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who is not a member of the ruling party, released a statement suggesting she might veto the bill should it land on her desk. 
 
“One of the political groups this time chooses to initiate the law that brings us closer to the flawed Russian model and not to the European model,” read the statement, which added that “the president of Georgia cannot support such legislation and persecution of new agents.”

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