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Russian Federation in Georgian society and on the streets of Tbilisi. Of course everything is interrelated."
Formally, Georgian aircraft were banned from landing in Russia for failing to meet safety regulations. Russian airlines, meanwhile, were banned from taking Russian citizens to Georgia since “they are not safe there”, according to officials. The move was in fact made after a Russian MP was de facto taken out of Georgia after protesters stormed the parliament where he was addressing a meeting of lawmakers from Georgia and other regional countries. A decision to offer him the parliamentary speaker’s chair to do so sparked an outcry.
As for the release of Dr Gaprindashvili, Karasin linked this with the activation of an entire range of Geneva talks instruments.
Karasin said that he “hopes this problem will be resolved in the near future,” but at the same time, he voiced his opinion that the tools, such as the Incident Elimination Mechanism, which was developed within Geneva discussions in 2008-2009, should be launched on a permanent basis.
“We have to force this mechanism to work, we have to launch a hotline. We should use more deliberately the entry of the co-chairs of the Geneva discussions into the capitals, they visit Tskhinvali or Sokhumi, though they are deployed in Tbilisi. If these tools work, we will have guarantees that such a dramatic incident will not happen again. All instruments of the Geneva discussions, which are not fully activated at the moment, should be put in place. We are changing the information, the foreign ministries are communicating, but this is not enough,” Karasin stressed.
2.2 EU’s outgoing top diplomat warns of risks of backsliding on rule of law in Georgia
The European Union’s outgoing High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, said in Strasbourg on November 27 that “today we see the risk in the country [Georgia] of backsliding on some important reforms in the rule of law area”, Civil.ge reported.
Her remarks came amid the big street protests seen in Tbilisi with demonstrators demanding a proportional voting system is adopted before next year’s scheduled general election, but also in the context of a controversial process that has enveloped the selecting of judges for the supreme court.
Following constitutional amendments and changes to the law of Georgia on common courts, the minimum number of judges at the supreme court increased to 28. At the same time, 10-year appointments were changed to lifetime tenures, and Georgia’s High Council of Justice was given the authority to nominate candidates for parliamentary appointment. The High Council of Justice started the selection of supreme court judge candidates and at the beginning of September provided a list of 20 candidates to be submitted to the parliament for approval.
The selection process was generally critically received, despite positive assessments of the move to live-stream interviews.
The OSCE/ODIHR assessed the judge selection process as “lacking
7 GEORGIA Country Report December 2019 www.intellinews.com
