On October 31, President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili invoked his Constitutional power of veto for the first time and amendments to the law on electronic communications adopted the day before were returned to the Parliament with the President’s motivated objections.
Civil society organizations participating in the campaign It Affects You Too welcome the President’s decisio. Before vetoing the amendment, the President announced: “there is a strong consensus in our society that position should be defined over this issue and we should move to a modern democratic form of functioning of the special services.”
In President’s view, the practice of total and uncontrolled phone surveillance by the previous government must be abandoned. On October 31, the Parliament supported the president’s proposal and under the amendments adopted by the legislators, the new deadline of December 1, 2014 was set for tackling the issue of secret phone surveillance.
In this light, non-governmental organizations participating in the campaign It Affects You Too urge the Parliament of Georgia and the Chairman of the Parliament Mr. Davit Usupashvili to organize a meeting of the parliamentary task force as soon as possible. Further, a dialogue should commence between the three branches of the government, with the aim of resolving the issue of security agencies’ unrestricted access to personal information in a timely manner. Otherwise, we will be facing the same challenge of a tight time-frame for drafting relevant amendments in time.
We believe that without establishing guarantees for protecting civil rights in Georgia, we will never be a civilized and democratic state. All politicians should consider this issue when making the decision.
