Parliament Procedural Issues Committee Chair: no question of President impeachment

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 [Parliament address] of the President [on Monday] showed that she had exercised powers above those defined under the Constitution, and addressing the Constitutional Court serves to regulate this situation,” the MP of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party noted.

Kadagishvili also explained Georgia lived in a “new constitutional environment” where the functions of the President were “absolutely different” than before.

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.