Campaign finance reform in Georgia may potentially threaten freedom of expression and donor funding for non-governmental organizations, civil society activists say.
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s recent fall from power garnered lots of media attention in Georgia. Like Italy, Georgia seems to fancy outsized political personalities. And like Italy, it suffers from high unemployment. But unlike Italy, Georgia has hit on a quickie political solution for this problem. It’s called television.
For as long as the republican form of government has existed, elected representatives have had to fight the temptation of letting private financial interests influence their political decisions. Georgia is not immune from this tendency.
In the United States, the embattled postal service is resorting to drastic cost-cutting and sell-offs to stay solvent. In the Republic of Georgia, the post office is taking a different route to fiscal soundness – running the lottery.
The educated public learned that renowned Georgian theater director Robert Sturua had been dismissed from the post of artistic director at the country's leading Rustaveli Theater in Tbilisi from the maestro's own curt posting ("I've been fired") on Facebook late on August 16.
Faced with a growing outcry over the arrest of three prominent photographers on espionage charges, the Georgian government on July 13 took action to counter criticism that a desire to stifle a press freedom is a major motivation for the spy case.
Georgia’s proposed election code changes, the result of a deal between the governing United National Movement and opposition parties, seem to dim the hopes for genuinely competitive parliamentary and presidential votes in 2012 and 2013 respectively, some Georgian civil society activists fear.
In a sign of religion’s growing influence in the South Caucasus, the founding of an organization to represent Georgia’s Muslim population has sparked an emotional face-off with the Soviet-era body for the region’s Muslims, the Baku-based Caucasus Muslim Board.
Georgia has become the first post-Soviet country outside of the Baltics to ban former KGB operatives and senior Communist Party and Komsomol officials from holding public office. While many Georgians welcome the move, some critics worry that the measure could easily lead to civil rights abuses.
