New amnesty bill in Georgia: will it help Saakashvili?
Part of the opposition has introduced a bill on amnesty to the Georgian parliament. The bill’s author is the “Girchi” party, with co-authors including the “National Movement,” “Strategy Agmashenebeli,” and “European Socialists” parties, as well as MPs Aleko Elisashvili, Khatia Dekanoidze, and Tariel Nakaidze.
Currently, the opposition is consulting to support the bill. Girchi’s leader Yago Khvichia stated that the amnesty would apply to all prisoners, including former зresident Mikheil Saakashvili.
“Mikheil Saakashvili is also one of the prisoners. He is not an exception; this amnesty applies even to people accused of more serious crimes than Saakashvili. But I am not initiating this amnesty because of Mikheil Saakashvili. I am doing this so that half of the people in prison can leave along with Mikheil Saakashvili,” says one of the project’s initiators.
However, the parliament speaker Shalva Papuashvili directly states that amnesty for the former president should be ruled out:
“He created a system of torture and human dignity violations in Georgia. Our duty to the victims of Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime is to make him fully serve his sentence.”
The “For Georgia” party, founded by former prime minister Giorgi Gakharia, also considers it unacceptable to release people convicted of official crimes through amnesty.
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What does the bill propose?
According to the bill:
- Sentences for serious and particularly serious crimes should be reduced by 1/4;
- Sentences for less serious crimes should be halved;
- Sentences for drug-related crimes and abuse of office should also be halved;
- Life imprisonment would be replaced with a maximum of 30 years.
The explanatory note accompanying the bill highlights that Georgia currently “leads in the number of prisoners” in Europe, and the criminal code is “more repressive than Soviet legislation.”
“The principle of zero tolerance, declared by the previous government, has been maintained and expanded by the current ruling party, the ‘Georgian Dream’.
The judiciary as a system of control and punishment for ordinary people by the ruling authority remains a politically controlled instrument and, unfortunately, has not been transformed into a reliable institution,” the explanatory note says.
