Financing of NGOs in Georgia must be controlled - Power of the People

NGOs in Georgia

At a meeting of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on foreign policy in the Caucasus, members of the US Senate and State Department reproached the Georgian authorities for “rolling back from democracy”, and recalled that Washington has provided six billion dollars in “financial assistance” to Georgia over thirty years.

According to Power of the People, a party formed by dissident MPs from Georgian Dream, most of the US funding goes exclusively to NGOs, which means the money is used “not for our country, but for their own agents, and no one should say ‘thank you’ for this. That is why it is necessary in the near future to prepare proposals for transferring NGO funding to a ‘hard legal field’,” the Power of the People movement said in a statement.

Three deputies of the Georgian Dream – Sozar Subari, Mikhail Kavelashvili and Dmitry Khundadze – left the party and parliamentary posts on June 28 and founded the Power of the People movement.

One of the MPs, Mikheil Kavelashvili, addressed an open letter to US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan, urging to publicly separate herself from the provocations of the opposition National Movement party.

On July 22 three deputies appealed to US State Department spokesman Ned Price. According to them, they do not want “countries” to rudely interfere in Georgia’s “internal affairs”. This statement followed the support expressed by Ned Price for US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan.

In a Power of the People statement of August 26, the movement accused the US Embassy of doing everything to overthrow the Georgian government.

“We consider it a matter of honor not to thank anyone for financing our own agents. Moreover, we believe that the current practice of funding NGOs from abroad poses a threat to Georgia’s sovereignty. Thus, not only should we not thank anyone for funding NGOs, but on the contrary, this funding should be introduced into a strict legal framework. We will prepare our proposals in the near future,” representatives of the Power of the People movement stated.

The deputies also argue that according to the “pseudo-liberal vocabulary”, democracy means agentocracy. In their opinion, with their “unfair resolutions” about the backwardness of Georgia, deputies of the European Parliament are trying to weaken the “democratic government” of Georgia, so the authors of the resolutions should be called “representatives of the European bureaucracy.”

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On November 17 at a meeting of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, it was announced that the system of US assistance to Georgia could be changed and based on “merits”.

Also speaking at the committee meeting was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, who said that “[w]hat we’ve been seeing lately is very worrying because we’re seeing a rollback of democracy in Georgia.” Donfried also talked about the lack of democratic progress in Georgia and mentioned criticism of US Ambassador to Georgia Kelly Degnan.

On November 8, MEPs discussed the annual report on the implementation of the Association Agreement between Georgia and the European Union at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Brussels. According to the compromise document, Bidzina Ivanishvili is no longer considered an oligarch; however, in the chapter on deoligarchization his name and surname are indicated and it is deemed necessary to take legislative action regarding Ivanishvili’s excessive influence.

The document refers to persecution of the media in Georgia, political persecution of the opposition, and an insufficiently transparent procedure for electing a public defender. The European Parliament also calls on the Georgian authorities to send former president Mikheil Saakashvili for treatment abroad “for humanitarian purposes and to reduce polarization in society.”

NGOs in Georgia