Government Pressure Triggers Renewed Civil Activism

Pressures for Control and Regulation Coincide with Interest in Self-regulation

In a last year the Georgian government has proposed several versions of the draft legislation aimed at strengthening official control over financial flows and implemented activities of the civil society organizations (CSOs). These drafts failed to advance to the floor of the parliament, but have triggered higher level of CSO cooperation in Georgia.

Renewed interest of the government officials in exerting control over CSO activities does not have one single reason. Some suggest that increased activism, especially in researching various economic and political aspects of the government activities and filing the shadow reports to the international bodies has created some unease in the highest echelons of the authorities.

Georgian CSOs have operated under fairly liberal legislative environment, which is in place since 1996. The fall 2001 was, however, marked with an attempt to reverse this liberal trend. The first draft law On Grants and Humanitarian Assistance was developed at the Ministry of Finance under presidential orders. Most analysts have conceded that blurry legal formulas of the document allowed for discretionary control and restriction of CSO activities. After engagement of the CSO leaders in consultations with the Ministry the initial draft was tabled and a compromise version developed, which however was never submitted for the review of the parliament.
(Government Pressures Civil Society  )


But silence on part of the government proved to be a sign of a coming storm. With security concerns starting to dominate the political agenda post 9/11, president of Georgia has claimed some CSOs could be involved in terrorism, without backing the statement with any substance. ( “NGOs Build Terror in Shevardnadze’s Mind”  ). This initiative heightened fears among the civil leaders that legal and financial levers could be used against politically unreliable civil society groups. Violent gang attack on a minority watchdog on July 10, 2002 only reinforced these fears.

After a brief summer recess, most likely caused by the political tensions with Russia, the Minister of Finance issued an order on October 24, 2002 to start monitoring of the received grants and project implementation of the CSOs. The order was based on a presidential decree of August 13, 2002. Involvement of the former security ministry official in a group proposed to conduct a monitoring process was another worrying sign of the government pressure.

But a constant government pressure on CSOs that developed in waves since 2001 has helped to establish mobile mechanisms for self-defense of the civil groups. Moreover, somewhat paradoxically, renewed government pressure has triggered the leading national non-governmental agencies to consider specific ways of enhancing the organizational quality and capacity.

The main result of the government pressure is in improved CSO cooperation. Advocacy groups of flexible structure and distribution of duties were established to lobby against the government proposals. These attempts also attempted to utilize the “boomerang effect” of seeking support from the international non-governmental organizations and the donor governments to press their case with the Georgian government.

But the approach of CSOs was not exclusively confrontational. The working group of NGOs created as the Ministry of Finance introduced its first draft, met the Minister to learn about the actual motives beyond the draft law, and actively cooperated with the Ministry officers to devise a draft that would adequately address those concerns without hurting civil development in Georgia.

With the last decree of September 24, 2002, a situation was a bit different. Vazha Salamadze, chairman of the Georgian Business Law Center who oversees the legal side of activity by the CSO advocacy group, says the Ministerial order totally lacked legal basis, as the issues listed were beyond the competence of the ministry.

Still, consultations with the Ministry were held on October 11, 2002, during which the Ministry of Finance agreed to redraft the order, skipping some of the provisions criticized by the civic groups. However, Vazha Salamadze notes, the new order still lacks the mechanisms for addressing the main concerns of the Finance Ministry – namely a problem of monetisation (sale) of the goods received through the humanitarian assistance programs.

While Georgian CSOs demonstrate their supreme expertise capabilities vis-a-vis the government agencies, government can endeavor to engage in cooperative relations with them to further legitimate interests of the society and the state. However, it seems that the bureaucratic preference still goes to the humbly submissive civil sector, rather than to the agile and mobile civil society groups.

Meanwhile, the advocacy and the coalition-building tools successfully used in self-defense, start to become the building bricks for the new initiatives for defending wider popular interest. The donor agencies are echoing the trend.

Recently a coalition of two US and six national CSOs launched a Citizens Advocate! Program (CAP) which would help to further improve advocacy capability of the national civic groups and to undertake specific advocacy efforts in several areas, proposed by the national NGOs in field. The Advocacy Steering Committee (ASC) is established to guide the program. It includes comprises of the Save the Children Federation of the United States, United Nations Association of Georgia, Center for Change and Conflict Management “Partners-Georgia,” Public Information Center “Alternative”, Georgian Business Law Center, Center for Strategic Research and Development and The Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development. Washington-based International Center for Non-Profit Law serves as an associated member of the ASC, while other national experts can be invited with expert status as needed.

The ASC members have already launched an NGO assessment process, which would cover most of the regions of Georgia and form a baseline for evaluation of the advocacy capacities of these groups. Based on this study the ASC would launch the series of custom-made training and capacity building exercises and support several issue-based advocacy initiatives in coming two-and-a-half years.

ASC member Irina Tsintsadze says, cooperation with media and using effective media campaigns would be the key for success. Her organization – Center “Alternative” (PICA) – is undertaking a complex content analysis of the Georgian media to assess popular attitudes towards civic activism and the CSOs in Georgia.

For the nearest future, ASC members plan to support the cooperative trend among the national NGOs. Founding director of the UN Association of Georgia, Ramaz Aptsiauri says Georgian civil groups should try to enhance their transparency and alleviate governmental and popular suspicion in the aims of the CSOs and the means they employ.
To serve this purpose, ASC in cooperation with wide spectrum of the national civil groups plans to launch consultations on elaboration of the “ethic code of conduct” for the Georgian non-governmental agencies. Vazha Salamadze says, such code would help to establish the minimal criteria for civil organization performance. On the other hand the process of consultation on the code itself would help to build the consensus on the trends of CSO development in Georgia.

Thus the governmental pressures did trigger the Georgian civil groups into action, which gives hopes for the Georgian civil sector staying at the forefront of the democratization process in the country. Civil leaders hope that enhanced cooperation between their agencies would help to break certain alienation of the CSOs from the populace, improve the quality and extent of services that would benefit people.

Civil Georgia would keep you updated on the process. Since December 2002 an independent web-project Advocacy Georgia would be established to provide continuous update of the advocacy efforts in Georgia.