Public consideration of the draft revision of the Constitution

“I believe, we have adopted the document completely excluding formation of authoritarianism and autocracy and it will be ensured in long-term run”, - the Speaker, Irakli Kobakhidze stated at public consideration.

Public consideration started in Kutaisi, where the Speaker provided the attending academicians and students with the information about the changes to be introduced to the Constitution. The ambitious goal envisaging fundamental change of the Constitution has been already achieved, though due to over-politicization of the process, the essence and the context were not deeply discussed.

“We have outlined the ambitious plan to fundamentally change the Constitution and the Parliament achieved this goal. Unfortunately, we had no opportunity to hold in-depth considerations about the Constitutional changes due to over-politicization of the process and it deprived the opportunity to thoroughly discus the essence and the context of the Constitutional changes. We cherish the greatest desire to in academic form discuss these issues and it is possible with the representatives of the academic circles and I am happy to see the representatives of the academic circles, Universities, the professors and students attending the public consideration of the Constitutional reform and the Constitutional changes”.

The initiated draft envisages only five changes to the Constitution.

The Speaker overviewed the adopted document and spoke about the main objectives of the reform. "The Parliament has outlined two main goals for the State Constitutional Commission upon set up in December, 2016.

The first goal was to ensure compliance of the Constitution with the legal principles. In this regards, the Constitution provided the number of gaps, including the text contradicting with the checks and balances principle and hence, we strived to first of all ensure compliance of the Constitution with the legal principles, including with the fundamental principles, such are separation of powers, as well as other principles.

The second task was to improve the administration system. The current Parliamentary administration system is imperfect providing lots of gaps and it does not comply with the current checks and balances principle as we fail to have the strong Parliament supposed to be the central link of the system, we fail to clearly dissociate the competences between the President and the Government.

There are lots of gaps characterizing the current administrative system. Our task is to eliminate these gaps and I believe that we have achieved the outlined goal. One of the main tasks is to have the Constitution able to prevent and exclude formation of autocracy in long term run. The current, still prevailing document fails to exclude it, the document adopted in 2010 and we believe that we have adopted the document completely preventing formation of autocracy in long term run”. The document should as well be improved in technical terms.

“The current document provides technical gaps – starting from the grammatical up to the stylistic gaps. The structure is completely imperfect. Initially, we wanted to conditionally title the Articles provided in the Constitution and it appeared practically non-feasible due to extent of imperfection of the structure. Today, the new document has titled Articles indicating that the structure is improved and brought into compliance with the elementary legal technical principles”.

Fundamental revision of the Constitution was ensure with the wide representative Commission composed of 73 members, including MPs, non-Parliamnetary opposition, Constitutional agencies, experts and NGOs.

The Speaker introduced the essence and the context of the changes and overviewed the new edition. According to the Venice Commission recommendations, the ruling team has developed the Constitutional draft envisaging admittance of the electoral blocs in single manner for 2020 Parliamentary elections, annulment of bonus system, concerning the Constitutional Law and freedom of faith.

The public consideration was attended by the academic circles from the Western Georgia, students, regional media and civil society.