UNM parliamentary minority group said after a meeting on July 8 that it would resume its parliamentary work from this week when the Parliament, which is in summer recess, will reconvene for a special session to discuss bills it failed to finalize during the spring session.

UNM announced boycott on the last sitting of Parliament’s spring session on June 28 in protest against arrest of four senior officials from the Tbilisi city municipality.

The goal of the boycott was to attract public attention to these “illegal arrests” of the Tbilisi city officials, UNM parliamentary minority leader Davit Bakradze said on July 8, adding that this goal has been achieved and now UNM’s task is to engage in parliamentary debates on number of important bills.

According to the preliminary agenda, among the bills, which the parliamentary special session plans to discuss, are amendments to the law on occupied territories and amendments to the law on high education – both of these bills have been strongly opposed by the UNM; both of these bills will be discussed with second reading.

Suspending boycott was one of the issues discussed during a meeting between UNM parliamentary minority leader Bakradze with PM Ivanishvili and parliament speaker Davit Usupashvili on July 6. After that meeting Bakradze said that the PM and parliament speaker expressed desire for the UNM to suspend boycotting the Parliament; Bakradze said on July 6 that he personally was in favor of suspending the boycott, but it was up to the parliamentary minority group to decide.