Kupradze: Banning Parties Affects Up to a Million Georgian Voters

Irakli Kupradze, Secretary General of Strong Georgia - Lelo, said in a speech at the Constitutional Court that banning parties would affect not only ordinary parties but up to a million Georgian voters. At the session, the plenum of judges is considering the lawsuit of Georgian Dream.

According to Kupradze, there is a crisis of trust regarding the process. As a way out, he named that the plenum should apply to the Strasbourg court on procedural issues.

According to him, the process is political and legal. He considers it political because 89 deputies of parliament decided through the Constitutional Court to ban five political parties.

Kupradze noted that the plenum has 7 judges instead of 9: one judge could not be appointed by parliament, another filed a recusal, which, in his words, the plenum did not take into account, and then withdrew from the court's composition altogether. He said the plenum was only recently renewed with two judges, while two judges who are no longer represented had dissenting opinions. In Kupradze's assessment, this chronology shows that there may be political interest in making a decision that bans the will of more than a million voters.

In his words, the Strasbourg court enjoys trust, including during the previous government, when it issued a ruling in the case of Roin Shavadze. Kupradze urged the plenum to apply to Strasbourg so that it could answer a question of a recommendatory nature, including on the procedural part. In his words, the case is unprecedented and there is no definition of how it should be considered. As an example, he named that the plenum could not agree on the procedure for considering motions: they started with one method, changed it midway, and then reworked it again in a different way.

Kupradze also said that when considering the ban of any party, the charges must be fully separated. According to him, the word "Lelo" is mentioned eight times in the charges, five of which are only in the title and the list, and the charge does not apply to them.

Kupradze also pointed to the crisis of trust in the fact that the lawsuit was filed three times. In the first two cases the court needed several months, while in the third case, when the plenum's composition had been renewed, a new hearing was scheduled within three days.