Georgia’s Premier praises country’s independent justice system

Enforcing an independent judicial system is one of the Georgian Government’s main achievements, said the country’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili to a group of representatives of the Supreme Council of Justice.

When Garibashvili met with the Supreme Council of Justice members today, he told them the Georgian Government had made no attempt to interfere with the court system, and would not interfere.

This was my message today and I reiterated with full responsibility that our Government has not exerted and will not exert any pressure on the court. No one will dare to interfere in the court’s activities. Judges today have a unique opportunity to get fully free of any pressure that existed in the past years, the PM said.

The aim of Garibashvili’s visit to the Supreme Council of Justice was to reinforce the message that the new Government has given the public a free and fair judicial system.

One of the messages that I had was that the main achievement of our Government was laying the foundation for an independent judiciary. We have the ambition to build a fair state, a fair society and it cannot be achieved without independent judiciary, Garibashvili said. 

The sides discussed issue related to the legal and judicial reforms in the Georgian court. 

Garibashvili said the Government fulfilled its promise of increasing judges’ wages by 70-80 percent, which had a positive effect. Until now, judges’ salaries had not increased for the past five years, which Garibashvili said this reiterated the previous government's "vicious attitude toward the judiciary”.

He ended his discussion with the Supreme Court members by repeating that the Georgian justice system "should be as free as never before”.