The Speaker of the Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, signed the law “On transparency of foreign influence”. He noted that the main goal of this law is to “strengthen the resilience of Georgia’s political, economic and social systems against external interference.”
He claimed that if non-governmental organizations and the media want to be involved in the decision-making process and influence the lives of the Georgian people, with funding from foreign governments, they must meet the minimum standard of transparency.
“Today I signed the law “On transparency of foreign influence”.
The main goal of this law is to strengthen the resilience of political, economic and social systems of Georgia to external interventions.
The approach of the law is simple and clear. If non-governmental organizations and media want to be involved in the decision-making process and influence the lives of the Georgian people, with funding from foreign governments, they must meet a minimum standard of transparency – the population must know who is behind each actor. This is true of state institutions, political parties, and civil servants, and it should be true of foreign-funded organizations as well.
As we said, the law would achieve other goals in addition to its immediate goal. The two-month review process confirmed this.
The process showed us once again that the radical opposition puts the interests of other countries above the national interests of the Georgian people. They confuse national interest with applause from politicians of other countries, and independence with obedience. They were like that when they were in power, and they remained like that in the opposition.
In addition, for two months we saw threats, blackmail, stigmatization of the law, we saw ministers of foreign countries protesting against the government elected by the people, we saw Maidan being mentioned from outside and its aesthetics copied from inside. That is, we saw everything that is non-European and Soviet in nature. And all this because the Georgian people have expressed their desire to know more about the money that is coming into their country to affect their lives.
Therefore, the most disappointing thing in this discussion, drowned out by shouting, was probably that until today no foreign state, no foreign donor, no foreign funded non-governmental organization has appeared, which would say that it is ready to voluntarily undertake the obligation of transparency of its activities towards the Georgian people. No one!
This once again showed our people that everything else is just an excuse, and in fact the purpose of the protest is to preserve the privilege of spending foreign money secretly from the people.
This apocalyptic picture was painted against the backdrop of the fact that the Transparency Law establishes the only simple obligation for organizations with more than 20% of their income to come from foreign funding to declare their finances once a year. This is the minimum obligation that could be imposed. There is no lesser commitment to transparency in any legal system worldwide.
We see that over time, all the myths created by disinformation have been dispelled, emotions have subsided, and many of the citizens who joined the radical opposition protest have already seen that, in fact, the Transparency Law will increase the responsibility and accountability of non-governmental organizations and their funders, will improve the political system, weaken disinformation, reduce radicalism and polarization. And most importantly, it will give the citizen a leverage so that the funding received from abroad is used in his interest, and not only in the interest of the donor and his funded organization. That is why this law is one of the most Georgian laws.
Finally, I would like to thank the Georgian people, who once again showed their wisdom, did not give in to the flood of lies and hatred and showed everyone at home and abroad that there is only one side – the side of Georgia and there is only one choice – stand on the side of Georgia,” Papuashvili said.
