The Speaker of the Georgian parliament has signed into law a controversial bill on foreign agent transparency. The US has threatened sanctions against officials in the post-Soviet nation over the piece of legislation.
Shalva Papuashvili signed the bill on Monday, after MPs voted last week to override a veto by President Salome Zourabichvili. It requires NGOs and media organizations that receive a significant amount of foreign funding to disclose this fact to the public.
The speaker reiterated to journalists that the law’s aim is to “increase the resilience of political, economic and social systems in Georgia to foreign influence.” The Justice Ministry now has 60 days to launch a registrar of organizations that get over 20% of their money from outside Georgia.
Opponents of the bill, including the president, have branded it “Russian” and an attack on democracy. Supporters have counter-argued that it is similar to what Western nations, including the US, have in place.
Washington has said that officials who support the bill and their family members may be slapped with visa restrictions by the Department of State for supposedly “undermining democracy.”
The law was promoted by the ruling Georgian Dream party, whose top MP, Mamuka Mdinaradze, called the pressure “unprecedented and at the same time comical.” He claimed that in some respects, it was worse than what Tbilisi had faced from Moscow back when Georgia was part of the Soviet Union.
Georgia drifted away from US-backed neoliberal policies after former President Mikhail Saakashvili was pushed out of power and national politics in the 2010s. Last week, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused the US of backing two attempted “color revolutions” in the past several years. The term refers to foreign-fostered anti-government mass protests aimed at toppling the government, like the putsch that put Saakashvili in power in the late 2000s.