GDDG Names MP Manana Kobakhidze as Constitutional Court Judge Nominee

The ruling Georgian Dream – Democratic Georgia (GDDG) nominated GDDG MP Manana Kobakhidze as a candidate for a vacant seat at the Constitutional Court of Georgia.
 
One seat in the nine-member Constitution Court has been vacant since September 2016, when the ten-year term of Ketevan Eremadze, who was appointed through the parliamentary quota, expired. 
 
Mamuka Mdinaradze, chairman of the Georgian Dream faction, said on January 23 that “an optimal” decision has been made with respect to proposing Manana Kobakhidze, as “she will most probably obtain the endorsement of the parliamentary majority.”
 
“She will be one of the successful judges,” MP Mdinaradze told reporters. “She will guarantee and she is obliged to guarantee impartiality in order to avoid any question marks and avoid making her tenure a subject of constant speculations.”
 
Kobakhidze, who was the First Vice Speaker in the previous Parliament, was re-elected in new parliament through GDDG’s party list. About a year before the elections, she got embroiled in a scandal, after Aleko Elisashvili, who chaired the presidential pardon commission from November 2013 to April 2014, claimed that two senior lawmakers from the Georgian Dream ruling coalition – Eka Beselia and Manana Kobakhidze – tried to exert undue influence on him while lobbying for preterm release of several inmates convicted in the 2010 “cocaine case”. In March 2016, the Prosecutor’s Office said that the investigation into alleged influence peddling in the process of inmates’ pardoning has been closed without filing charges against anyone as no evidence of criminality was found.
 
Kobakhidze has been a member of Georgian Dream since its establishment and from April 2012 served as the party’s nominal chair. Before entering politics, she held various positions, including the post of the executive director at Tbilisi-based NGO “Article 42 of the Constitution.”
 
Otar Kakhidze of the European Georgia for Better Future faction, who recently left the United National Movement along with other lawmakers, criticized Kobakhidze as “a politically-biased individual, who should not be a judge [of the Constitutional Court].” 
 
MP Ada Marshania of the Alliance of Patriots said that her faction will support Kobakhidze’s appointment.
                                                                                                                                                      
Meanwhile, Transparency International Georgia slammed Kobakhidze’s nomination as an attempt to “politicize” the Constitutional Court and called on the parliament not to endorse her candidacy. 
 
“Naming Manana Kobakhidze undermines the authority of the judiciary and the public trust towards its decisions, posing a threat to institutional development of the country’s pivotal constitutional bodies,” TI’s January 23 statement reads.