On October 7, the Speaker of the Parliament Shalva Papuashvili announced that the ruling Georgian Dream party will initiate another round of impeachment proceedings against President Salome Zurabishvili. The speaker said at a briefing that the reason for deciding for filing the complaint with the Constitutional Court is the visits she made to European capitals last week.
Speaker Papuashvili stated that after the Constitutional Court had found the President guilty of violating the Constitution of Georgia, it was the “radical opposition” that gave her the “impunity” that saved her from impeachment. He stated that after she received this security, she continued to violate the Constitution at will, in particular by conducting other foreign visits, including those to France, Germany, Poland and Belgium last week, without receiving the right to do so from the government.
“It should be noted that if before the decision of the Constitutional Court, foreign countries and organizations could say that they did not know that the president needed the consent of the government for her visit, after the [Court’s] decision, the reception of Salome Zurabishvili without the mandatory consent of the Georgian government, together with the intentional disrespect to the Georgian people and its constitutional arrangement, is a violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the country and is against our common European values,” stated Papuashvili.
Papuashvili stated that this “open and brazen” violation of the Constitution won’t remain without reaction from the government. “Therefore, the parliamentary majority decided to restart the impeachment procedure and prepare a new constitutional proposal to be submitted to the Constitutional Court of Georgia before the parliamentary elections.” He stated that after GD comes to power with a constitutional majority, the President will be impeached during the very first session of parliament.
Speaker Papuashvili noted that the president’s term would end next year anyway, and that the impeachment a month before that would have a “symbolic and principled” significance so that she would go down in history not as the former president, but as the impeached president.
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