Georgian Parliament to consider Freedom Charter

The Georgian Parliament has passed a resolution to start this week the discussion of draft legislation concerning the Freedom Charter initiated by the deputy Gia Tortladze.

The decision to launch the discussion was taken in the course of the parliamentary session after Tortladze complained again of reluctance by the deputies to consider his initiative.

According to Georgia Online, Tortladze introduced his draft bill in February. The Freedom Charter combines the Law on Lustration and the Patriotic Act, a combined draft bill dealing with information on financial operations and bank transfers involving large amounts, keeping record of the former special services officers, safety control in places of mass accumulation of people, and many other issues.

The Patriotic Act is a counterpart of a similar U.S. document that provides for video surveillance of strategic facilities, monitoring the cargoes being imported and re-exported and bank transfers.

In particular, under the draft legislation, the amounts transferred form foreign countries to physical and legal persons including civic organisations exceeding 10 thousand laris will be monitored by the Counterterrorist Centre of the Ministry of Interior.

At the same time, under the legislation, the Ministry of Interior should equip at air ports, railway stations, underground stations, strategic bridges, electric stations and other facilities with video surveillance cameras.

As regards the Law on Lustration, the draft bill is based on the experience of the Eastern European countries, Czechia and Lithuania. The draft bill establishes the list of positions that cannot be occupied by security officers of the former Soviet Union, the communist party and Komsomol leaders, etc., reports GHN.