PM Garibashvili: Ensuring constitutional order “supreme public interest”

Ensuring constitutional order represents the “supreme public interest,” with individual initiatives in the matter being “simply inadmissible”, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said on Tuesday in comments on a controversy around President Salome Zourabichvili’s recent visits to Europe.

In his statement, Garibashvili underscored the significance of “ensuring constitutional order” amid challenges faced by “our state and people, together with the entire world”.

The Government head explained such order would mean a functioning of all constitutional bodies and institutions “within the strictly defined powers”.

The comments follow the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party announcing on Tuesday it would ask the country’s Constitutional Court to confirm whether Zourabichvili violated the Constitution in her international visits since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month.

The GD Political Council said the Constitution stipulated the visits could only have been made through the “consent of the Government”, while the President’s meetings had not complied with the provision “as she herself admitted at yesterday's sitting [in the legislative body]”.

[The visits] were planned by the President without any prior consultation with the Government, and the Government was informed of the visits only after [the fact], confirming that the President had intentionally violated the Constitution,” the ruling party statement said.