2005 ORDINARY SESSION

(First part)

REPORT
First sitting

Monday 24 January 2005 at 3 p.m.

Mr HERKEL (Estonia). "Dear colleagues, I should also like to congratulate the rapporteurs on a comprehensive a very constructive document. Of course, I share the general opinions about the developments in Georgia. From the beginning, the Rose revolution was very positive. There were a lot of steps towards real democracy. As an observer, I was present in three elections.

I saw how that process created an atmosphere of hope among people in Georgia as well as in the international community. We saw a similar process in Ukraine.

Sometimes, the hopes of the people are in contradiction. Sometimes, their hopes and even those of the political elite are too optimistic and do not understand the inevitability of structural reforms. I very much appreciate certain suggestions made in the documents. I shall emphasise only some aspects.

Why are we talking about weak opposition? One of the reasons ? I share Mr Bokeria?s opinion that the opposition made mistakes ? is the very high threshold in parliamentary elections, of 7%. That was not amended before the elections in March last year but I hope it can be changed for the next parliamentary elections.

Another important question is about constitutional amendments. The implementation of the Venice Commission opinions would be very useful. Unfortunately, it had not happened. One of the key issues of democratic development is how to give more power to Parliament to make decisions, and to hold real parliamentary discussions.

I did not find much information in the report and memorandum about the media and public service broadcasting. That was one of the probleMs about which there was criticism during the Monitoring Committee meeting in Tbilisi last October. There was one amendment on it.

The key question is not, however, whether public service broadcasting will be implemented; I am sure it will be. The question is whether there will be really equal opportunities for different political forces and for different opinions in society. Of course we can add to that reform of justice, a plea bargaining system, human rights, minorities, corruption, local self-government, etc.

As has been mentioned many times, key questions to be resolved are the frozen conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which we discussed during our last session in October. I shall repeat the most important message to come from that. Of course, Georgia must do many things, but the Georgian side cannot achieve such considerable efforts without the assistance and good will of their neighbours, especially the Russian Federation. I hope, therefore, that co-operation between those countries will be developed with the assistance of the Council of Europe.

Thank you very much."