President appoints Security Council deputy secretary as acting chairperson

Today President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili named deputy secretary of the country’s Security Council Levan Bodzashvili as acting head of the agency. 

Bodzashvili, 42, will temporarily fulfill the post until Margvelashvili names a new secretary of the State Security Council; the President’s advisory agency on national security issues. 

The position became vacant in early September after Irine Imerlishvili, secretary of the Council, was appointed as a Judge of the Constitutional Court by the President. 

It is not likely Bodzashvili will continue as a chairperson of the State Security Council, as he has already been named as the President’s candidate for the vacant position of judge in the Supreme Court of Georgia. 

Meanwhile the country’s new Parliament, elected through the October 8 Parliamentary Elections, will discuss the outcome of President Margvelashvili’s nominees for Supreme Court Judge. 

Here are additional details about nominee Levan Bodzashvili: 

• He is a visiting Professor and Researcher at New York Fordham University School of Law. He has delivered lectures on Comparative Constitutional Law at the University since October 2012.
• Since 2006 he has delivered lectures on Constitutional Law, European Union (EU) Legislation and Foreign Affairs, Diplomatic and Consular Law and Cyber Law at Tbilisi State University, at Georgian-American University and at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA).
• From 2004-2008 Bodzashvili was a member of the Venice Commission of the European Council. 
• From 2005-2009 he was Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, supervising the issues related to EU and bilateral relations. Simultaneously he held the position of Director of Department of European Affairs, Deputy Permanent Representative and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Austria and to International Organisations based in Vienna. 
• From 2003-2004 Bodzashvili was Director of the Department of International Law and State Representative at Human Rights European Court of Justice. 
• From 1996-1997 he engaged in working practice at the US Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court of Georgia and the Supreme Court of Georgia in different positions.