“The ‘Transparency Law’ was not just good, but necessary,” stated Mamuka Mdinaradze, leader of the parliamentary majority.
When asked about US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend all foreign aid programs for 90 days, Mdinaradze noted that due to this decision, “the ‘Transparency Law’ might not be needed at all anymore.”
“Let them now call Trump’s decision Russian too – [this shows] how they kept people living in lies. Each person who spread these lies should be held accountable,” Mdinaradze noted.
The law on transparency of foreign influence, adopted last year, requires registration of non-commercial legal entities and media outlets in Georgia as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they derive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily suspending all US foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals.
The order, among many Trump signed on his first day back in office, said the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values” and “serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”
Consequently, Trump declared that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”
