A bilateral U.S.-Georgia working group on democracy and governance under the strategic partnership charter between the two countries met in Tbilisi on June 21.

The U.S. delegation, made up of senior officials from the Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and Department of Justice, underlined importance of upcoming elections, and campaign period free from violence, as well as reiterated concerns over Rustavi 2 TV ownership dispute case, and called for adoption of judicial reform bill, which has been stalled in the Parliament.
 
Democracy working group is one of those four inter-agency bilateral groups, which were established to address priority areas of the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Charter, signed in January, 2009. Other priority areas of cooperation identified by the charter are defense and security, economic and people-to-people relations.

Deputy Foreign Minister Davit Zalkaliani, Deputy Justice Minister Alexandre Baramidze, Deputy Interior Minister Archil Talakvadze, as well as other officials and members of parliament from both the ruling coalition and opposition represented the Georgian side at the meeting.

“Our message was clear: we support Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration aspirations,” U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Bridget Brink, said after the meeting.
 
“As long-time friends of Georgia, we note the importance of a pre-electoral period that is free from violence and intimidation and the government’s primary responsibility to ensure this outcome,” said Brink, who served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi in 2011-2014.
 
“We appreciated PM Kvirikashvili’s constructive posture and tone during the pre-electoral period and his call for police forces to ensure order especially in the regions,” she said.

Assistant Administrator of USAID for Europe and Eurasia, Thomas Melia, said that during the meeting it was noted how important it would be for the Central Election Commission to “establish an early warning system to uncover and avert incidents of violence and to work with the law enforcement to make sure that the campaign season, rallies and meetings remain peaceful.”

“Abuse of state resources in the political campaign periods has been a problem in the past here and in many other countries,” he said. “Now this is important for the government to clarify for the people and state employees alike what exactly constitutes an abuse of state resources to ensure that is monitored and discouraged.”

Bridget Brink said that the U.S. delegation noted “continuing concerns with the Rustavi 2 case.”

“Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic trajectory depends on maintaining of diversity of viewpoints in the media,” she said.

“We also underscored the importance of an independent judiciary to any strong democracy and urged the passage of the third wave of the judicial reforms,” Brink said.

She was referring to the package of bills, known as “third-wave reform”, which was adopted by the Parliament with its first and second readings this year, but its approval with the final reading has been delayed.

Among other issues, the package, drafted by the Ministry of Justice, also proposes introduction of electronic case assigning system that would provide for randomly assigning cases to judges, minimizing the role of court chairpersons in the process.

The sitting Parliament will hold three sessions this week before the summer break. It is not yet clear whether the Parliament will reconvene in September as usually the legislative body holds no sessions one month before the parliamentary election, which is scheduled for October 8. 

Parliament Speaker, Davit Usupashvili, told senior lawmaker at parliamentary bureau session on June 21 not to let disagreements on couple of issues in the bill to thwart adoption of the entire package.

Before the meeting of the working group on democracy and governance, the U.S. delegation met Georgian government, civil society organizations, and political party representatives on June 20.