Parliament nearing passage of disputed constitutional amendments

Against opposition protests, parliament passed in its second hearing yesterday a set of constitutional changes which would redraw how the legislature is elected.

The opposition oppose the new plan, urging current majoritarian MPs—whose support is necessary for the two-thirds vote needed for constitutional changes—not to support a system they say will unfairly hand the government a majority in the next parliamentary elections.

“This is an attempt by the authorities to [stay in the majority] illegally, which will cause a civil confrontation in the country,” MP Levan Gachechiladze, a leader of the eight-party opposition coalition, told his colleagues in yesterday’s parliamentary session. It was not clear why he called the proposed changes illegal.

The ruling party says there are no clear arguments being made against the new system.

“[It’s] hard to get a real understanding of their argument,” prominent majority MP Giga Bokeria told the newspaper last week. The opposition is “lost in their own points,” he said.

Under the new system, which must pass one more hearing in parliament before being enacted into law, 75 MPs will be elected proportionally through a country-wide party list. The other 75 party-nominated ‘majoritarian’ MPs will be elected from individual districts, one MP per district, in first-past-the-post voting.

This increases the share of majoritarian MPs to half of the next parliament’s 150 seats, up from the previously planned one-third.

The opposition have criticized the plan for giving unequal weight to sparsely populated rural districts, and for not including breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia among the districts assigned majoritarian representatives.

In response, ruling party MP Davit Kirkitadze offered to reassign four of Tbilisi’s ten planned majoritarian MPs to South Ossetian and Abkhazian districts.

In the January 5 presidential election, opposition coalition Gachechiladze performed strongest in the capital; incumbent Mikheil Saakashvili had some of his best showings in state-controlled portions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After hours of debate over the new system, Speaker of Parliament Nino Burjanadze invited the oppositional New Rights party, key members of which are currently on hunger strike in her parliamentary antechamber, to support a reversion to the previous, heavily criticized system of electing majoritarian MPs through multi-mandate districts.

“If you want, let’s leave the old majoritarian system, but you should come [vote] and officially support it,” Burjanadze said. “But I remember perfectly well what your position on this system was, how you demanded to change it and considered it the reason for the country’s crisis,” Burjanadze said.

The proposed constitutional amendments would also decrease the vote threshold for parliamentary representation from seven to five percent.

Parliament also finalized an amendment yesterday which schedules the next parliamentary elections for May; according to the justice minister, the president must announce the exact date of the election 60 days beforehand.

Meanwhile, opposition supporters formed “corridors of shame” outside parliament’s entrances, heckling majority lawmakers as they entered the building

Conservative member Zviad Dzidziguri, a leading opposition coalition member, called Burjanadze, Saakashvili and Central Election Commission chairman Levan Tarkhnishvili thieves and liars.

“Burjanadze wants to maintain her post, but today we say to her that she will go to the political grave with this government and Saakashvili,” Dzidziguri declared outside parliament yesterday, where dozens of opposition supporters are on hunger strike.

That same day, Gachechiladze, the opposition MP, invited Burjanadze to debate him on a late-night talk show.

Burjanadze refused the offer, replying that “parliament is a fine place for debates.”

And the hunger striking New Rights MPs, encamped in Burjanadze’s reception room, requested blankets for their vigil.

In response, Burjanadze said she would under no circumstances allow beds, blankets or television sets in her reception room.

“No parliamentary speaker on earth would have permitted a hunger strike in her reception room,” she told a New Rights MP in yesterday’s parliamentary session, adding that she allows the hunger strike because the opposition has no desire to enter dialogue. “[But] you know perfectly well that going on hunger strike is not comfortable, though your colleagues found a more comfortable situation than the people on hunger strike outside parliament.”