Georgian government drops 'Russian law' after days of protests

In many ways they're seen as just kind of looking at how to look after themselves to maintain their grip on power And these kinds of tools they're borrowing from the Kremlin playbook because it's effective at quelling dissent So they're you could argue that they're they're not exactly pro-russian They're just behaving in a way that will in an authoritarian way that will enable them to hold Sure. Well last night was actually the second night of Mastery protests that we've been seeing here in Tbilisi And before that even people were coming out in crowds to protest against this legislation That the government's been trying to push through and again last night we had police in riot gear using water cannon and tear gas and pepper spray to Dispel to get rid of the protesters who were out to force them to clear the area around parliament But there were huge numbers of people very determined And and it went on sort of cat and mouse really through most of the night I think by the by this morning A lot of the barricades and things the people that started using like benches and things to kind of block the roads And to put up barriers between themselves and the police and being cleared away And there was a bit of a cleanup operation going on with shop shop windows being cleaned down from graffiti and so forth And then a bit of a quiet moment before actually the good news Was announced which was that the government has said okay, we're gonna withdraw this bill Given the amount of Traverse it's generated and we don't want to we don't want to we don't want to People to get injured and hurt we're gonna withdraw This bill so a victory of sorts for for all of those tens of thousands of people who come out to say no We don't we don't want this. Yeah and traction with the government, which is a rare pleasure indeed Can you very briefly sum up what the bill was because I want to move on to to what else is sort of happening The sort of background to this in in george. I'm just very briefly the bill So to actually two pieces of legislation And one of them has been dubbed like a russian law because it's very very similar to what vladimir putin introduced Or the russian government introduced back in 2012 which basically Requires anyone who receives more than 20 percent of their funding if you're a civil society organization Or you're a media organization if you get more than 20 percent of your funding from from abroad You have to register yourself as a foreign agent um, and this was seen as basically a way of muscling descent um, and uh and stigmatizing anyone who was basically receiving foreign money and has been very good at silencing the the kremlins critics and the idea that it was going to be repeated here just drove people nuts really And that's the point. It could be you know because you mentioned the kremlin there You know all of this has everything to do doesn't it with the sort of prospect of of the rushification Of georgia which seems to be ongoing at the same time as this sort of conflicting aspiration to join the e-u So what's the the state of georgia at the moment? It sounds pretty perilous Well, what's going on is it's really sometimes really hard to kind of like pick apart all of the the the conflicting sort of elements to this But I mean on the one hand you've got the opposition saying look This government is pro-russian And they were saying no to this russian law and you're all russian slaves And and everything that you do seems to smack of this kind of like obsession with with going down the path Taking taking georgia away from its from its european aspirations to join the e-u georgia has actually submitted its application to join the european union And that it's therefore they're in they're in sort of They're working with the kremlin. They haven't introduced the sanctions that the european union and the us has placed on russia And they don't speak out loud enough to in their support of ukraine In fact, it's been a public falling out between the georgian government and ukrainian government And that's a very powerful sort of idea But on the other hand a kind of more complex look at this is that actually the georgian government Is still kind of on the outs on the outwards appearance pro european It's it's it's a it's got a sort of a liberal agenda that says that we are going to still take georgia to europe But they're but it's in many ways They're seen as just kind of looking at how to look after themselves to maintain their grip on power And these kinds of tools they're borrowing from the kremlin playbook because it's effective at quelling descent So there you could argue that they're they're not exactly pro russian They're just behaving in a way that will in an authoritarian way that will enable them to hold on to power They've got elections next year and They they they think that this is what they need to do because The the biggest let's say critics of the government here or the most effective ones are these organizations few handful of them really that are Shining a light on on on the sort of bad things that the government are up to so they're holding the government accountable So the government is constantly complaining about these these uh these organizations that have money from the west And they're saying look you're you're not you're this isn't your function. You shouldn't be receiving money To be politically active But just one thing I wanted to mention is that all of that money a lot of western money From the eu from the us coming into georgia the biggest benefactor The biggest recipient is actually the georgian state itself So it's sort of smacks of hypocrisy to say well you you can't give your money to these organizations that are Negative about us, but at the same time we're very happy to to receive all this financing to to keep our economy and to keep our state You know going to to fill up our budget.

Yeah, and just very briefly Robin, what about public reaction? you know Who is public opinion supporting are they? um, you know I don't know because there's something about the whole situation that sort of is vaguely Seems vaguely reminiscent of the the volatile situation, you know in ukraine in 2014 that may done revolution Yeah, it's reminiscent of that exactly because um, you know polls consistently put More than 80 percent or around 80 percent of the population say they want Georgia to be in europe and in fact that they want georgia to join nato So there is this big support for for for georgia's european integration They they are in a very powerful moving words from from some of the people we spoke to women last night So you know we belong to europe we are europe my ancestors She said they made a choice and that choice shouldn't be questioned because for many years georgia I mean before the soviet union uh georgia was with a very refreshing kind of um sort of liberal Uh fledgling democracy that was emerging And they always consider themselves european Um, and so we we do see the see this kind of like it was as if enough was enough And we had that there's a heartening scenes of of these thousands of people coming out young and old You know, but they they see this for what it is that this is the government can say oh well We're doing this for the for transparency We we want that we want to or we want people to we want to know where our money's coming from or where this money is coming from But that it's transparent to everybody that um, this is not a democratic Uh law to be introducing and it's taking georgia in the wrong direction.

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