Weekly Review of the Parliamentary Committees’ Sessions. July 23-27 2001

Committee of Legal Issues, Rule of Law and Reforms

On July 25th, the Committee discussed the part of the Election Code, concerning the composition of the election commissions.

Under this bill, the commissions would be composed of representatives of nongovernmental organizations. Only those NGOs, which have functions of social development and elections’ monitoring in their charters, would be selected. Joint commission of the Parties and Blocks of the Parliament, which have surpassed 7% election barrier, would select minimum 3 and maximum 7 NGOs. 7 members of the central election commission would be selected from minimum 14 and maximum 18 candidates from the NGOs and approved by the 2/3 of votes of the Parliament.

The candidates must not be members of any arty and must not have experience of working on government positions or ‘power structures’.

Members of regional and district commissions would be as follows:

· 3 representatives of non-governmental organizations (The central commission would appoint members of regional commission which would, then, appoint the members of the district commissions)
· 3 members will be from the parties and blocks, that have surpassed 7 % election barrier
· 1 member will be appointed by regional sakrebulo (council)

Chairman of the non-governmental organization “International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy” Nugzar Ivanidze expressed his protest on appointment of the commission’s member by the sakrebulo and other technical errors in the document. Committee’s member Koba Davitashvili supported this protest.

Only three representatives of the Opposition, Vakhtang Gvaramia, Irakli Mindeli and Giorgi Guliashvili attended the session of the Committee. They expressed their discontent that they have never seen a new draft of the bill, prepared by the Majority and therefore it is impossible for them to participate in the discussions.

Irakli Mindeli stated, that the Opposition could not present their alternate version, since the Majority did not have an original one to make an alternative to.

After long polemics on procedural issues, the Committee accepted the inter-faction group’s version as a legislative initiative.

Committee of Foreign Relations

On July 24th the Committee discussed the “Credit Contract on Development (Electro Energy Market Support Project) between Georgia and International Association of Development”. The subject has been reviewed during the plenary session and postponed for the next sessions according to the committee’s request.

The contract has been presented by Deputy Minister of Finances Zurab Soselia. According to his information, the credit will be received by the organizations of distribution and transmission. The direct beneficiary of the credit would be the Ministry of Finances, as per request of the World Bank. The project must be implemented before July 30, 2005. 85% of the credit would be used for supply and re-equipment of mentioned organizations.

As Soselia has said, the Parliament virtually supported the contract, when it ratified 1 million USD advance of the credit.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a negative conclusion of the contract. Soselia expressed his dissatisfaction towards the Ministry of Foreign Affairs because of absence of ethics in inter-institutional relations. It has appeared that the conclusion has been made by First Deputy Minister Giga Burduli and not by Deputy Minister Shota Dogonadze, who has been involved in the process but was not in the city at the time when the conclusion was made.

Most of Committee’s members, including Chairman of Subcommittee for Control Zviad Mukbaniani are skeptic about the credit. They presume, that the contract is very unclear on the issues of consulting service and extra expenses and therefore it might become a source of corruption.

Committee’s conclusion could not be adopted due to absence of Committee’s quorum. However, the members confirmed that they would not support the credit contract.