Georgian Parliament Speaker says share of grants in state budget “0.5%” after suspension of USAID funding for court

Shalva Papuashvili, the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, on Tuesday said the share of grants in the ₾29 billion ($10 bln) state budget constituted “0.5 percent”, in comments after the United States Agency for International Development on Tuesday announced its decision to stop funding the Constitutional Court of Georgia in the wake of the Government’s adoption of a controversial law on transparency of foreign influence earlier this year.

Papuashvili said it was “up to donor organisations to choose what to fund”, in comments on the development.

This is a somewhat good process, somehow we are getting acquainted in accounting. What was opaque to the Georgian people has become transparent, [the topics of] where and what money was spent”, he said.

Regarding the USAID in particular, I would have preferred [them] to make a statement and clarify concealment of results of parallel counting in 2020 [parliamentary elections], in which then leadership of USAID was involved and together with International Society for Fair Elections And Democracy, hid the results of the parallel counting from the Georgian Government and people”, he added in reference to the controversy where the ISFED said it had made erroneous calculations of votes.

The official claimed the USAID “still owes an explanation to the Georgian people why the Agency hid the results from the public and why they calmly watched the chaos that the domestic radical opposition was organising based on those fake results”.

On the suspension of the financial aid, the Parliament Speaker said the country’s budget served as “the foundation for [financing] both the Court and state institutions”, and noted the Government accepted funding “being a friendly gesture of support and not a pressure instrument”.