There is no alternative to transparency in a democratic public institution. No one can argue why transparency can be bad. Such a statement made today the Prime Minister of Georgia.
“I personally stated my position regarding the re-introduction of this bill [the Draft Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence], so I will not talk about this issue in detail, I will say in general that there is no alternative to transparency in a democratic society, in a democratic public institution, no one can justify why transparency can be bad.
Yesterday, we heard a confession from a representative of one of the non-governmental organizations, who said that we should not get into the content, the content is the domain of the Government. That is, the absence of it is the domain of our opponents. We certainly could not have dreamt of a better confession than that. It is true, everything is correct in the content, the draft law is correct from beginning to end, the only thing that this draft law provides for is the annual declaration of the finances that NGOs and relevant media have.
They are alleging that transparency is Russian, non-transparency is European. Last year, they managed to mislead a part of the society, they set the values upside down, however, I am sure they will not be able to do it again.
It became clear that Facebook and social media are censored by our political opponent parties. NGOs, Fact Checker and Detector of Myths - Sergi Kapanadze and Tamar Kintsurashvili. When these people were in power, directly affiliated with the government, they censored the media themselves, today, they no longer have the opportunity to do so, however, they censor where they can, this is social media, which has become clear these days, the interesting thing is that among our opponents, this censorship caused a lot of positive hype. This shows their handwriting and values.
Non-transparency and censorship are Europe for these people. Both non-transparency and censorship are completely unacceptable to us, we believe that transparency and freedom of speech are the defining values in democracy, so let’s protect as much as possible both the one and the other principle, both values”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.