MP Makhashvili: Disagreement with law must not lead to bypassing legal framework

Chairman of the Georgian Parliament’s Committee on European Integration Levan Makhashvili said that 34 of the 57 participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe did not support activating the Moscow Mechanism with regard to Georgia.

Speaking at the 33rd Annual Session of the General Committee on Political Affairs and Security of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, Makhashvili said the countries that did not support the move represented approximately 60 percent of OSCE participating states and included the United States.

Makhashvili argued that the draft resolution under discussion reflects what he described as an “alarming tendency,” claiming that allegations contained in the Moscow Mechanism report are presented as established facts.

“ Georgia cooperated with the OSCE in good spirit, but obviously we cannot accept the findings due to the obvious reasons explained numerous times in various or relevant OSCE formats. The presented draft resolution provides an extremely alarming tendency of portraying the provisions of the Moscow Mechanism report as hard evidence in the form of fact and assertion.

While the report itself highlights that these are only allegations. For instance, the most concerning wording is in paragraph twenty, stating that violence, ‘Reached the threshold of torture,’ while the report itself never contains such formulation. Even paragraph fifty-five of this very draft resolution states that these are only allegations.

So, in order to avoid purposeful misinterpretation or information manipulation, may I kindly ask you to delete this particular sentence in paragraph twenty as it deviates from the Moscow Mechanism report wording and is a political interpretation of the report finding,” he said.

The committee chairman also defended Georgia’s legal framework, saying sovereign states have the right to adopt legislation to protect their electoral processes, political systems, and socio-economic stability from foreign interference.

“Legal regulations represent the only legitimate instrument available to any sovereign country, including Georgia, for protecting its electoral processes, political system, and socioeconomic integrity from foreign malign interference. A small country with a strategic location and complex neighbourhood dynamics has every reason to establish legal guardrails. If anybody dislikes a particular law, the democratic and constructive response is never to bypass or undermine the legal framework through confrontation, external coercion, or amplifying domestic unrest. The proper response would be to debate or to challenge the law’s specific provisions based on their legal merits.

 For those who don’t know, the transparency legislation is discussed in the Constitutional Court of Georgia and the European Court of Human Rights. This is the right way to follow and not to weaponize OSCE PA or related institutions for short-term  political headlines, because it will ultimately hurt and damage the reputation of OSCE PA itself. So we strongly recommend to avoid political labelling and let the courts judge them on legal merits,” Makhashvili said.