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Front News Georgia
What has Maiden brought to Ukraine? – occupation of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the ongoing conflict with Russia. These are the results of the process MEP Viola von Cramon wished to see in Georgia, Irakli Kobakhidze, the head of the ruling Georgian Dream party said on Wednesday.
The comment came on the heels of a recent tweet by the MEP following the dispersal of a rally in central Tbilisi on Tuesday, protesting the adoption of a controversial foreign agents bill with its first reading.
The MEP tweeted the developments had reminded her of Maidan in Ukraine in 2013-2014, when people took to the street for the country’s European future.
Kobakhidze claimed the current Georgian authorities had managed to prevent “fatal consequences for Georgia” and pledged to act “not in accordance with the interests of radical forces or MEP Cramon, but in line with the interests of the Georgian people”.
He also said if Georgia had adopted a law on the transparency of foreign influence, the country would have prevented a “number of disasters”, adding the “turmoil will ease and the law would ensure the transparency of domestic NGOs”.
Kobakhidze alleged specific NGOs had been using their funding to “trigger unrest and confrontations in the country and fight against the church”.
Police arrested 66 demonstrators on Tuesday for petty hooliganism and disobedience to law enforcement officers after the vote on the bill in the state legislature.
The bill on foreign agents proposed by former members of the ruling Georgian Dream party who still remain in the parliamentary majority and are vocal against the US and the west envisage the registration of domestic NGOs and media organizations as foreign agents if their derive more than 20 percent of their incomes from foreign donors, without specifying allied or hostile states.
The bill has been widely condemned as a “Russian law “ that could hamper Georgia’s democratic development and its EU integration.
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