Parliament official says civil society “should reflect will of public”, “not donors’ political lines”

Nikoloz Samkharadze, the Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Georgian Parliament, on Thursday said civil society “should reflect the will of the public, not the political line that donors want to pursue”.

Samkharadze was commenting after the United States President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend all US foreign aid programs for 90 days, and said the move was to examine the conformity of funding and the extent to which allocated funds were creating an “unfavourable environment with third countries”.

I think the reasoning as to why [Trump] suspended aids for [non-governmental organisations] for 90 days is very interesting - it says that in many cases it is subject to investigation, to what extent this funding was consistent with the stated goals, and also whether it created an unfavourable environment for the United States in its relations with third countries and whether, instead of developing partnership relations, it strained the United States relations with third countries. Therefore, I expect that this segment will actually get crystallised”, the Parliament official said.

“I believe that it is important for the country to have an active civil society that expresses the will and wishes of specific segments of public, including protests and dissatisfaction among them towards the Government, because this is one of the additional levers for the Government to listen to the people and understand what the people's concerns are. Unfortunately, we do not have such a civil society in Georgia”, he claimed.

Samkharadze further added that the domestic non-governmental sector was “actually hanging on to ephemeral foreign policy controversy” that the country was “heading toward Russia”.