TBILISI, Georgia (AP) – Georgia’s ruling party on Thursday said it would withdraw bills that opponents – and tens of thousands of protesters who flocked to the capital – had warned could stifle dissent and limit media freedom, leading to a Russian-style oppression would result.
The bill would have required media and non-governmental organizations that receive more than 20% of their funding from foreign sources to register as “agents with foreign influence”. Opponents argued that the bill was inspired by a similar law in Russia designed to silence critics and could hamper Georgia’s aspirations to one day join NATO and the European Union.
Protests against the law began last week in the capital Tbilisi but have swelled in recent days and have been met with tear gas and water cannons. The Interior Ministry said 133 protesters had been arrested, although Georgian police lately announced they had released all who face administrative rather than criminal prosecution, without specifying how many.
Citing the “controversy in society” that the proposed law has sparked, the ruling Georgian Dream party and its allies said they would withdraw it.
This process could be complicated, however, as the bill has already passed the first of three required readings. Protests resumed Thursday night, with tens of thousands demonstrating to ensure the law is actually abandoned – as well as the release of those arrested.
“Today is definitely the first victory this protest has brought, but this fight is not over yet,” said Nino Lomjaria, a former public defender who gathered outside parliament on Thursday.
“We don’t trust the promises made by the ruling party, which they often only make to defuse protests,” she said.
A session of parliament to scrap the bill was scheduled for Friday midday. The protesters vowed to gather outside.
Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili had already announced that she would veto the law, indicating a growing rift between her and Georgian Dream. Zurabichvili is not affiliated with any party, but the ruler supported her candidacy in the 2018 presidential election. Since taking office, however, she has increasingly contradicted her decisions and policies, particularly on foreign affairs.
In recent years, opposition parties have accused Georgian Dream of pursuing pro-Russian policies while claiming to be Western-leaning. Opponents charge that the party’s founder, billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who has amassed a fortune in Russia, continues to call the shots in the Black Sea nation of 3.7 million people, even though the former prime minister is currently out of government.
The party has repeatedly denied any connection with Russia or any inclination towards Moscow.
Relations between Russia and Georgia have been rocky and complicated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The two countries fought a brief war in 2008 that ended with Georgia losing control of two pro-Russian separatist regions. Tbilisi had severed diplomatic ties with Moscow and the issue of the regions’ status remains a key nuisance, even if relations have improved somewhat.
Still, Russia has “many levers to pull,” according to James Nixey, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the London think tank Chatham House.
That includes political and economic influence, Nixey said, “not least in Ivanishvili himself, the man whose fortune was made in Russia and whose leanings are pro-Russian and anti-Western.”
Although they agreed to withdraw the bill, the Georgian Dream party and its allies say public opinion has been misled by the proposal.
“The law was mislabeled as ‘Russian law’ and its first reading portrayed in the eyes of a section of the public as a departure from the European course,” the lawmaker said.
The authors of Georgia’s bill said it would clarify when the work of organizations will be funded by representatives of foreign states and was modeled on the US Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.
The proposed law appeared to be similar to one enacted in Russia in 2012, which was used to shut down or discredit organizations critical of the government and President Vladimir Putin.
The proposed law would allow Ivanishvili to consolidate power and “sufficiently suppress” the opposition ahead of the next general election in 2024, Nixey said.
Ghia Nodia, a Tbilisi-based political analyst, said the decision to introduce the law likely came from Ivanishvili, who “shares more or less the same view as Mr. Putin: that these NGOs are puppets of the West.”
“Ivanishvili increasingly sees the West as an enemy that wants to take Georgia to war” in Ukraine and replace the current government of Georgia, Nodia said. Ivanishvili sees NGOs and independent media as tools to do this, he said.
But protests this month showed Georgian Dream miscalculated, analysts say.
Ruling politicians began backing away from the bill on Wednesday night, as huge crowds took to the streets and Thursday’s discussion of the proposal was called off.
The EU delegation in Georgia welcomed the exit announcement, as did Khatia Dekanoidze, a member of parliament for the pro-Western United National Movement party.
“Our kids did it,” she said.
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Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia.
