PM Garibashvili: Ensuring constitutional order “supreme public interest”
In his statement, Garibashvili underscored the significance of “ensuring constitutional order” amid challenges faced by “our state and people, together with the entire world”. Photo: Government of Georgia
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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.
Georgia is recognised as the “undisputed leader” among the countries of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership initiative, Mamuka Mdinaradze, the Executive Secretary of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, said on Monday.
A “united stand” is required on both Georgia’s European Union membership bid and around Ukraine, President Salome Zourabichvili told the Georgian Parliament in her annual report on Monday.
It is important for the European Union to maintain Georgia’s path to becoming a member state, President Salome Zourabichvili told European Council President Charles Michel on Tuesday.
The Government of Georgia has been “forced” to ask the country’s Constitutional Court to confirm whether the President of Georgia violated the Constitution in her international visits, the Political Council of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party said on Tuesday.
The question of impeachment of the President of Georgia is not in order, Irakli Kadagishvili, the Chairman of the Rules and Procedural Issues Committee of the Parliament of Georgia, said on Tuesday in response to a controversy around Salome Zourabichvili’s recent visits to Europe.
The Government believes the President of Georgia should have stayed in the country during the “difficult processes” in the region, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili told reporters on Tuesday in comments on Salome Zourabichvili’s international visits since the breakout of hostilities in Ukraine last month.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili “repeatedly rejected” to appoint Government-nominated ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions over the past year, the Administration of the Government of Georgia said on Tuesday.
The Georgian President refused to sign nominations for five ambassadors by the Government and rejected recall of one between June and July in 2021 and this year, Irakli Kobakhidze, the Chairman of the ruling Georgian Dream party, said in response to the Presidential Administration’s claim that Salome Zourabichvili had signed the appointments for “all nominated candidates” for diplomatic missions and representations at international organisations.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili on Saturday rejected claims by President Salome Zourabichvili that she had been denied approval for her foreign visits for meeting the country’s partners by saying “all official requests” for the President’s visits had been approved by the Government.