Several MPs refused to vote for foreign agents bill due to “fascist campaign” – ruling party head

Irakli Kobakhidze, the head of the ruling Georgian Dream party, on Thursday claimed several of his party members refused to vote for the foreign agents bill last week due to a “fascist campaign” against them. 

He claimed “it was not easy” to resist the campaign against the bill, cited as a Russian law by the international community, adding “if there are some reshuffles, they will take place inside the party, not outside”. 

The ruling party was forced to recall a bill that envisaged the registration of domestic NGOs and media organizations as foreign agents if they obtained more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad last Thursday, amid large-scale protests, with the parliament rejecting the bill on Friday. 

Prime minister Irakli Garibashvili and the ruling party MPs and the government representatives have accused the “radical wing” of the opposition, as well as the county’s foreign partners, of “misleading the public” over the draft law, which was proposed in late February by the  former members of the GD who are critical to the west and the US. 

The former members of the ruling party, who created a People’s Movement last year, still remain in the parliamentary majority.