TI Georgia: parliament essentially abandoned its function during Covid-19 crisis

The Georgian Parliament has essentially abandoned its main function during the Covid-19 crisis, reads the report on the implementation of parliamentary monitoring prepared by Transparency International Georgia.

The study provides an assessment of parliamentary monitoring carried out during the period between January 1, 2019 and October 1, 2020.

The new rules of Procedure of the Parliament of Georgia were a step forward towards the enhancement of parliamentary control, which manifested in improved statistics on the use of specific parliamentary oversight mechanisms. Nevertheless, parliamentary control is weak while challenges with the accountability of the parliament and gov’t members in the process of parliamentary control as well as the lack of legislative guarantees for improving the rights of the political opposition remain serious”, reads the report.

The study revealed the following key challenges:

• During the Covid-19 pandemic and pandemic-induced crisis, the parliament actually refused to perform its function and fully entrusted its power of restraining fundamental human rights to the government. The parliament did not carry out an effective monitoring on the activity of the executive branch.
• During the Covid-19 pandemic, four ministerial hours were held instead of scheduled 11.
• Health Minister Ekaterine Tikatadze did not appear before a committee meeting, when summoned by the opposition.
• Parliamentary control mechanisms are often not applied to issues that are important for the country.
• Gov’t members and other high officials who are accountable to the parliament didn’t treat the oversight function of the parliament seriously; for example, ministers didn’t provide full answers to questions of MPs in a timely manner. Out of 1,683 questions posted by MPs during the reporting period, 288 questions were left unanswered.

Read the full report here.