Members of the Constitutional Commission Archil Talakvadze, Irakli Kobakhidze, Irma Inashvili and Mariam Jashi took part in the public discussions on constitutional amendments. Tina Bokuchava from the United National Movement and Sergi Kapanadze from European Georgia, refused to participate in the discussion.

The first public hearing on the constitutional amendments was held without the participation of citizens. The audience had an opportunity to send questions to the members of the commission online.

As Irakli Kobakhidze, a member of the parliamentary majority said during the discussion, “the proportional electoral system is better for Georgia’s stable, democratic development”.

“For that reason mentioned above, the ruling party gave preference to the proportional electoral system. The opposition missed the chance to support a fully-proportional system by 2020, however, the Government did not change the mind and fully proportional electoral system will enter into force from 2024”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.

Irma Inashvili, the leader of Alliance of Patriots, thinks that “it is a good thing that the country will move to a proportional electoral system by 2024, but it would be better if it was implemented by 2020”.

“It is very unfortunate that this bill was failed. We must think about how damaging is this for our democracy, country’s image, and the political spectrum. Our party supports constitutional amendments. There are enough votes in the Parliament to make those changes”, - added Irma Inashvili.

Archil Talakvadze, the Speaker of the Parliament, said that “the parliamentary and non-parliamentary forces reached a consensus on an initiated constitutional amendment”.

“This change envisages a 120/30 electoral system according to which 120 seats in the legislative body will be distributed via a proportional vote and the remaining 30 via the majoritarian system. On top of that, the agreement foresees a fair composition of election districts, a 1% threshold, and a cap recognizing that no single party that wins less than 40% of the votes should be able to get its own majority in the next Parliament. If the political parties decide to run together in the upcoming election, the threshold will increase. For example, in the case of four or five political parties that will represent an alliance, they should achieve a 5% threshold.

​At the same time, the radical part of the opposition is speculating as if the ruling party wants to win the election with less than 40% of votes. We never said that. Moreover, since 2012, the Georgian Dream has never been in power with less than 40% of votes”, - underlined Talakvadze.