Kobakhidze Slams Freedom House Report and “Pseudo Liberal” NGOs

Parliament Speaker Irakli Kobakhidze criticized the recent Freedom House report, which lowered Georgia’s overall democracy score. He claimed that it was “biased” against the Georgian government, and was influenced by “pseudo-liberal forces” that “are challenging the governments of Georgia and the United States.”

At a special press briefing held at the headquarters of Georgian Dream yesterday, Kobabkhidze stressed Georgia’s “fundamental progress” towards democracy, freedom and human rights since the 2012 unseating of Saakashvili’s United National Movement party.

“What preceded the year 2012, was rigged elections, zero balance among branches of government, gross human rights violations, including torture, rape, systemic practice of confiscation of property, full subordination of the judiciary to the Justice Ministry, [and] the government’s total arbitrariness,” the Parliament Speaker added.

Consequently, Kobakhidze then emphasized that while these “problems” had been successfully addressed in subsequent years, no significant changes were reflected with respect to Georgia’s overall democracy score, nor in terms of specific evaluation categories, including independent media, judicial framework and independence, and civil society.

Kobakhidze labelled the identical scores in the media category in 2012 and 2018 “ridiculous,” demonstrating the report’s “bias.” “In 2012, the government had an absolute monopoly over the media; all three national broadcasters - Rustavi 2, Imedi and GPB – had been illegally subjected to the influence of Mikheil Saakashvili and UNM in 2004-2012,” he said. 

Kobakhidze added that identical rankings in the judicial independence category were similarly “ridiculous.” “The judiciary was under the total control of the Justice Ministry before 2012, and the consequence was illegal rulings against thousands and tens of thousands of people; the court was successfully used against businesses, and as a tool for political persecution,” he said.  

“Unchanged civil society score was also surprising; while the civil society was largely loyal to the government before 2012, in subsequent years its attitudes have become more oppositional, which should have been reflected positively on the score, but the authors have demonstrated their partiality in this case as well,” Kobakhidze said.

Furthermore, Kobakhidze claimed that the report assessment that ex-PM Bidzina Ivanishvili’s influence remained “one of the key impediments” to Georgia’s democratic functioning, resonated with “the artificial picture drawn by Rustavi 2 and Saakashvili’s other friends.” “Speaking of informal governance without specifying its signs lacks argument,” he said. 

The speaker also talked about the sources of the report, arguing that the authors were reliant on the position of the kind of Georgian NGOs “which lack competence and are biased against the authorities.” 

“These are the so-called liberal, rather pseudo-liberal forces, which are challenging the governments of Georgia and the U.S.,” he said, adding that the best example of this was “the leadership of the National Democratic Institute in Georgia, for whom criticism of its own government is an everyday thing.”

Speaker Kobakhidze also emphasized that these forces had “nothing in common with liberalism and liberal values.” “Our government is exactly a liberal government [in its classic sense], and I would even say, the most liberal government in the history of Georgia,” he said. 

“We rest on values such as democracy, rule of law, human rights protection, justice, equality and tolerance, but at the same time, pseudo-liberalism and the forces, which are challenging our national identity, traditions and the Georgian churches, as well as the forces, which are challenging the very same values in the U.S., are unacceptable for us,” the Speaker said.

By Máté Földi 

Photo: https://www.facebook.com/KobakhidzeOfficial 

Related: http://georgiatoday.ge/news/9852/Georgia-Heading-In-The-Wrong-Direction-Warns-Freedom-House-