Ruling party head claims West will oppose bill in Georgia against fake information, defamation

Irakli Kobakhidze, the head of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Tuesday claimed the West would oppose a bill in Georgia that could make spreading fake information and defamation punishable, claiming foreign ambassadors “did so” and “misled” the public earlier this year over the foreign transparency bill, as he said by calling the legal piece a “Russian law”. 

 

“An Ambassador will come out and say such a bill is a Russian law”, Kobakhidze said, adding “a number of people in the country” had been requesting such a law, which he said was unlikely to be adopted due to potential reaction from the West. 

 

“When your main strength is lies, slander, disinformation, relevant people will do everything to prevent such a law from being adopted in Georgia”, he added, claiming many European countries were regulating this issue. 

 

The foreign transparency bill, that was rejected by the Parliament in March following large public protests, called for registration of non-commercial legal entities and media outlets in the country as “agents of foreign influence” if they derive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, without defining allied and hostile states. 

 

The international community condemned the bill as a “Russian law” as it could be used against the organizations in Georgia critical to the Government, like in Russia.