Freedom House: Dropping Democratic Facade
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Thursday, May 7
Freedom House, a US-based democracy watchdog, has issued a warning about a ‘powerful collapse of democracy’ across Central Europe, the Balkans and Eurasia, where many leaders are trying to free themselves from the balancing mechanisms left behind.
In its annual report, ‘Nations in Transit’, published on 6th of May, the organization writes that more and more leaders in Central and Eastern European countries are no longer even playing the rule of democracy, openly attacking democratic institutions and working to restrict individual freedoms.
Such attacks on democracy, we read in the report, manifested themselves in the dramatic weakening of democracy throughout Central Europe, the Balkans, and Eurasia, which even changed the classification of the four countries. Poland is out of the category of consolidated democracies and has been named a semi-consolidated democracy, while Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro have generally been excluded from the category of democracies and are considered transitional / hybrid regimes.
Freedom House has been publishing this report for 25 years, and this year the smallest number of countries were rated as democracies. Out of 29 evaluated countries, 10 were evaluated as democracy, 10 - as a hybrid regime, 9 - as an authoritarian regime. “In the last decade, the number of hybrid regimes has tripled, and the number of democracies has dropped by a third,” writes Freedom House.
Michael Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House said that the time has come for the European leaders that are committed to freedom to pay attention to the crisis in the neighborhood and for the US, which has a role to pay in defending democratic values. He expressed hope for this experience to emphasize the importance of transparent and accountable governance and to give new impetus to change.
“The Coronavirus crisis has created a situation for change, after which the situation could worsen, or, conversely, democracy could be revived,” Abramowitz said.
Georgia still remains in the category of countries with ‘transitional governments/ hybrid regimes.’ The deteriorating situation of the judiciary and the rule of law is a particularly disturbing trend.
On a scale where 1.00 to 2.00 is the consolidated authoritarian regime, and the score from 5:01 to 7:00 - Consolidated Democracy, Georgia's score is slightly worse than last year, it has lowered to 3.25 points from 3.29 points.
“Governments complete the courts with their loyal figures, adopt restrictive laws that abolish the independence of the judiciary and, in some cases, prosecute individual judges,” the report said, noting that the court's aggravation of independence has worsened the countrys’ performance - 6 states were included: the Czech Republic, Georgia, Latvia, Montenegro, Poland and Slovakia.
According to the report, the judiciary has long been a source of tension in Georgia's polarized politics, but in 2019 and early 2020, indiscriminate arrests and several controversial trials have exacerbated the already tense situation.
It’s also noted that newcomer to politics Mamuka Khazaradze was immediately charged with money laundering as soon as he announced the establishment of a political movement, and the more experienced opposition leader was sentenced to 38 months in prison in a renewed case involving misuse of budget funds.
“As a sign that such incidents will not be limited to the lower courts, the ruling majority in parliament has appointed 14 new judges to the Supreme Court indefinitely as a result of the ‘highly dysfunctional and unprofessional’ appointment process, ”the report reads.
Georgia is also mentioned in the parliamentary boycott - the report reads that the announcement of a full or partial boycott by opposition parties in Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Montenegro and Serbia has hampered the work of parliaments and has led to a lack of justice and legitimacy.
Freedom House remembers that parliamentarians from all opposition blocs in Georgia left parliament in February 2020 after the government withdrew its promise to move the country to a fully proportional electoral system. “If introduced, this system would reduce the chances of the ruling party, the Georgian Dream, to win the parliamentary elections again this year,” the report says, noting that the agreement to transfer to a mixed electoral system was reached in March only after involvement of European and American diplomats.
Georgia is also mentioned in the context of concerns about the rise of far-right, violent extremist groups,together with Baltic states, Poland, Bulgaria, Ukraine and Armenia. "These groups and their xenophobic messages may not be new, but they have shown a new level of cross-border cooperation and attracted growing support from their American and Western European counterparts," Freedom House wrote in its report.
Head of the Legal Affairs parliamentary committee, Anri Okhanashvili commented on the report, saying that it’s strange, that the tendency of the report directly contradicts with the official statements of US embassy and the EU, in which they praise GD’s reforms in judicial system and consider it an important step forward. As Okhanashvili noted, the ruling team always pays special attention to the relevant reports.
According to Mamuka Mdinaradze, the leader of the parliamentary majority, the Freedom House report is in fact inaccurate regarding Mamuka Khazaradze, the founder of Lelo.
As Mdinaradze said, “Regarding Khazaradze, it is said that an investigation has been launched against him and he has been charged since he entered politics. This is a factual inaccuracy, not an assessment,” explaining that the National Bank made the statement much earlier and the investigation was launched much earlier as well.
Leader of the European Georgia opposition party Sergi Kapanadze says that the report is a ‘verdict’ for the Georgian Dream ruling party, ‘perfectly describing’ the situation in the country. “Freedom House has exposed the Georgian government, and in practice, this means that we have a government that is not accountable to the people and that what it is doing is adequately assessed by the international community,” he added.
