On April 22, the Public Defender of Georgia, Levan Ioseliani, applied to the OSCE/ODIHR to prepare a conclusion on the Georgian parliament’s draft law seeking to cancel gender quotas.
The Office of the Ombudsman has urged the Parliament of Georgia not to allow the bill to proceed further until the conclusions of the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR are published.
“The above-mentioned draft law was announced to the public on April 1, and as a result of the accelerated discussion, on April 4, it was adopted by all three readings. The Public Defender responded to the draft law with a public statement and evaluated it negatively. On April 17, the President of Georgia vetoed the bill and returned it to Parliament with motivated remarks.
“Based on the appeal of the Monitoring Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Venice Commission is also preparing an opinion on the draft law.
“The Public Defender calls on the Parliament of Georgia not to allow the bill to proceed further until the conclusions of the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR are published, and to ensure compliance of each decision with human rights standards,” the statement reads.
At the end of March, Georgian Dream said it was to support the Girchi party initiative, which provides for the abolition of gender quotas in the party list.
Based on the existing law on gender quotas, at least every 4th candidate in a party list should be of a different gender. Georgian Dream MP Beka Davituliani stated that the parliamentary majority supports consideration of the mentioned legislative changes in an accelerated manner, and noted that they have received consent from Girchi, in return for “the selection of the CEC chairman being focused on the integrity and professionalism of the candidate and not for it to be used for personal political gains.”
On Wednesday, the Latvian Embassy in Georgia announced it was stripping MP Beka Odisharia of the title of Honorary Consul. Several weeks’ prior, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Latvia’s Saeimas, Rihards Kols, had called on Latvia’s foreign ministry to revoke the status from Georgian Dream MP Beka Odisharia following his shockingly insulting remarks towards female MPs, seeing him lashing out at female MPs who had accused him of being corrupt during parliamentary debates on abolishing the women’s quotas.
“F*ck you, you herd of unf*cked females! This is a syndrome of unf*cked women,” he told them.
In response to the Latvian Embassy’s announcement, Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of the parliamentary majority, said: “This is an obvious attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of Georgia, an attempt to determine the actions of Beka Odisharia and other MPs, so that they cannot make independent decisions, but make decisions under international pressure.”
By Team GT
