President of Georgia about wiretaps

The President of Georgia explained why she used her veto power for the first time and in June refused to sign the bill on “wiretapping” – amendments passed by the Georgian Parliament on secret investigative actions.

Speaking at a briefing today, Salome Zurabishvili said that there are issues when “the right of veto has a very high political connotation” because “it concerns the system”.

“There is a dividing line here – whether we are still in the Soviet legacy, or we are moving into a truly European system. Is our privacy protected from eavesdropping or not?

We know that we still live in a country where, if we want to talk, we think about taking the phone out of the room or leaving it. Then we overcome [эти сомнения]and we say, “To hell, let them listen”… This is not European life, this is not the protection of human rights, this is a different system, and we must get out of this system. That’s what I wanted to say with this veto,” Zurabishvili said.

According to her, the changes in the law were adopted in an “unreasonable form” and “hastily”, and all this raises suspicions that this was done “for the sake of strengthening power.”

“You cannot act like this at the moment when we announce that in these few months we are going to receive the status of an EU candidate country. If we are going to Europe, we must go. If we are not going, we must say so. This veto suggests that we need to decide once and for all where we are going,” Zurabishvili said.

The President recalled that the Venice Commission shared the grounds for her veto. Therefore, if someone accused her of incompetence, then “they should be embarrassed to blame the Venice Commission for incompetence,” she said.

“This is especially true for those who, at other times and in other situations, used the conclusions of this commission. We need to be a little more serious,” Zurabishvili said.