A Georgian opposition MP has punched a senior lawmaker of the country’s ruling party as he was making the case for adopting a controversial foreign agents bill, according to a video that went viral on social media on Monday.
Aleko Elisashvili, who heads the Citizens party and claims to have briefly fought in Ukraine against Russia in 2022, struck Mamuka Mdinaradze, the leader of the parliamentary majority and the executive secretary of the Georgian Dream party.
The video shows Elisashvili rushing to the rostrum and hitting Mdinaradze in the face as he was delivering a speech. The room then erupts in violent turmoil as lawmakers apparently try to break up the fight. The parliamentary session was briefly suspended, and Elisashvili had to be escorted out of the chamber by security.
The altercation came on the first day of debate over a draft law entitled “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence.” A similar initiative was rejected by MPs last spring after mass protests that resulted in clashes with the police.
Last year’s bill would have required individuals and organizations with more than 20% of foreign funding to register as “agents of foreign influence.” While its proponents argued that it would increase media transparency, its critics have labeled it “a Russian law.”
Russia passed similar legislation in 2012. The Russian law has been compared to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, which requires certain individuals and organizations to register as ‘foreign agents’. Moscow has denied having any connection to the measure being proposed in Georgia.
The Georgian foreign agents bill was also criticized by Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, who warned it would derail the country’s push to join the EU. The White House, meanwhile, has argued that the legislation would undermine freedom of speech and hurt Georgia’s ties with the West.
The only difference between the new and the old versions of the bill is that the term an ‘agent of foreign influence’ has been replaced by ‘an organization facilitating the interests of a foreign power’.
Meanwhile, Elisashvili has attempted to defend his actions, saying that he did something that no opposition lawmaker dared to do. “Mdinaradze is completely shameless… We are being dragged into Russia, but they won’t succeed,” he said, as quoted by local media, while urging fellow Georgians to go out and protest against the bill.
At the same time, Mdinaradze accused Elisashvili of “sneaking up on him like a thief,” adding that his colleague did not behave “like a man.”