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statement slamming the nomination of Kadagidze.
The group noted that Kadagidze was among 10 candidates nominated “without any public hearing or discussion” at the end of December. All the candidates, it alleged, were members of, or were sympathetic to, “an influential group” or “clan” within the judiciary.
2.5 Georgia’s ruling party backing constitutional changes to introduce new voting system
Following the March 8 agreement on changing the electoral system ahead of the 2020 general election, the ruling Georgian Dream party has brought forward a bill envisaging an amended constitution, Civil.ge announced.
The bill unveiled on March 11 needs the endorsement of two-thirds of lawmakers to pass. The last time that Georgian Dream promoted a bill for amending the electoral system, earlier this year, it included more radical provisions and it proved impossible to obtain the support of all of the party’s MPs. The initiative failed, triggering massive protests from the opposition. The new bill states that the parliamentary poll would be held based on “the 120/30 system”, under which 120 MPs would be elected through proportional representation party lists and 30 from single-mandate constituencies (also known as majoritarian voting system). Full proportional voting would be introduced from 2024 under the amended constitution endorsed last year.
Besides the mixed voting system, as a one-off measure the electoral threshold for entering parliament for the proportional representation votes would be fixed at 1% (currently it stands at 5%). As for the electoral blocs (coalitions), the threshold for them (in percentage points) would be equal to the number of political parties coalesced in the entity. According to the bill, if a political party/coalition of parties garnered less than 40.54% of all votes, it would not be able to form a government.
The bill proposes 30 single-mandate constituencies, eight of which would be formed in the capital Tbilisi while the rest, a total of 22, would be created in the regions.
2.6 Polls & Sociology
Georgia down three places on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index
Georgia has fallen three places on the 2019 edition of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) to 44th of 180 assessed countries.
Its points score declined by two to 56 compared to the 2018 edition. Nevertheless, in a commentary on the performances of countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Transparency International said: “Only three countries score above the global average: Georgia (56), Belarus (45) and Montenegro (45). At the bottom of the region are Turkmenistan (19), Uzbekistan (25) and Tajikistan (25).”
In the 2017, edition Georgia placed 46th and last year the NGO warned the country faced “democratic backsliding”.
9 GEORGIA Country Report April 2020 www.intellinews.com
