Berdia Sichinava to the Plenum of the Constitutional Court: History will assess everyone – the plaintiff, the respondent, and the court as well – I want to ask you to stand on the side of loyalty to history, democracy, and the Constitution
History will assess everyone; the plaintiff, the respondent, and the court as well. I want to ask you to stand on the side of loyalty to history, democracy, and the Constitution of Georgia. Please do not satisfy that constitutional lawsuit which demands that a different opinion, our political party, be assessed as unconstitutional and banned, – this was stated by Berdia Sichinava, representative of “Gakharia for Georgia,” in the concluding part of his speech at the Constitutional Court on the process of banning opposition parties.
According to him, any observer who reads this lawsuit will understand that this is the abuse by the authorities of the concept of defensive democracy in order to destroy opposition political parties.
“Any objective observer who reads this constitutional lawsuit will already understand how it is possible with this lawsuit, which I consider to be completely irrelevant, unprepared, and not based on evidence, to demand the ban of political parties in the country, which in our assessment is not part of the concept of defensive democracy by which the authorities try to interfere in a right provided for by the Constitution in order to establish constitutional order in the country, but rather this is the abuse by the authorities of the concept of defensive democracy in order to destroy opposition political parties.
Therefore, Mr. Judges, members of the Plenum, this is truly a historical process; you yourselves substantiate this, because a similar precedent, after the Constitutional Court of Georgia was created, such an issue has not been considered in an oral hearing; therefore I am confident that history will assess everyone; the plaintiff, the respondent, and the court as well. I want to ask you to stand on the side of loyalty to history, democracy, and the Constitution of Georgia. Please do not satisfy that constitutional lawsuit which demands that a different opinion, our political party, be assessed as unconstitutional and banned,” Sichinava stated.
To these words of Berdia Sichinava, the Chairman of the Plenum, Revaz Nadaraia, responded and stated that the Plenum’s decision by which the motion of “Gakharia for Georgia” regarding the postponement of the process was not satisfied was correct, because “the rights of the party were not violated by this, since you appeared before the court very well prepared.”
“I want to note, and I am not saying this with regard to what the court will take into account from Mr. Berdia’s explanation – that is another issue, I do not know – but the Plenum’s decision by which the motion of the party ‘Gakharia for Georgia’ was not satisfied was correct and the rights of the party were not violated by this, because you appeared before the court very well prepared,” Nadaraia stated.
