despite the streets, the bill on “foreign influence” adopted at 2nd reading – Libération

Two votes gone, one more left. The bill on “foreign influence” is adopted in 2nd reading in Georgia. Opponents continue to speak out in the streets.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets once more on Wednesday evening, May 1, in Georgia to protest, without success, once morest the controversial bill on “foreign influence”. The text was adopted at second reading by Parliament despite weeks of massive mobilization by its detractors. The deputies voted 83 for and 23 once morest this text which the ruling Georgian Dream party wants to adopt definitively by mid-May. The text still has to pass a third reading and President Salome Zourabichvili, who is in conflict with the ruling party, is expected to veto it, but the Georgian Dream has enough votes to override it.

Waving flags of Georgia and the European Union, demonstrators gathered Wednesday in front of the parliament building, where the gathering the day before had been dispersed by police with tear gas and rubber bullets, noted an AFP journalist. Tuesday evening, the police had already used the same stratagems to disperse the thousands of demonstrators who had gathered once morest this text seen as an obstacle to the country’s aspirations to join the EU, and called “Putin law”. Waving Georgian and European flags, thousands of protesters gathered once more in front of parliament, attempting to block the building’s entrances. If passed, the law would require any NGO or media organization receiving more than 20 percent of its funding from abroad to register as an “organization pursuing the interests of a foreign power.”

A first version of the text, inspired by a Russian law used by the Kremlin to repress dissident voices, was abandoned last year following large-scale street demonstrations. The resumption of debates in Parliament in April gave rise to a fight between deputies. Aleko Elisashvili, a member of the pro-European Citizens party, decided to run towards Mamuka Mdinaradze, co-rapporteur of the bill and member of the Georgian Dream party, to punch him in the face. What followed was a general fight in the heart of the hemicycle, leading to the cessation of the retransmission of the images. The session was interrupted a few minutes before order was restored.