The Coalition for an Independent and Transparent Judiciary and the National Platform for Drug Policy react to the Kutaisi City Court decision on the case of induced suicide committed by Demur Sturia and the criminal case of the band Birzha Mafia pending at Tbilisi City Court.

On June 16, 2017, the Venice Commission will approve its final opinion about the draft of amendments to the Constitution of Georgia. The Chair of the Parliament of Georgia has reiterated on numerous occasions that the government is ready to consider all recommendations of the Venice Commission; however, following release of preliminary opinion of the Commission on the draft amendments, the chair of parliament and individual MPs from the parliamentary majority have stated that they don’t share some recommendations of the Commission. 

The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) is responding to the 3 February 2017 decision of the Authorization Council for General Education Institutions which abolished the authorization of Shahin School-Lyceum LLC [1]. The GYLA believes that the decision to abolish the school’s authorization during the learning process fails to comply with the standard of substantiation and that the Authorization Council for General Education Institutions made a clearly inappropriate and disproportional decision, which resulted in unsubstantiated restriction of education, work, and personal development of a group of persons (students, teachers, representatives of the school administration).

On June 19, the ruling party unveiled its decision to keep the mixed election system for the 2020 parliamentary elections and to replace it with a fully proportional election system for the 2024 elections. In addition, according to representatives of the majority, the threshold for the 2020 elections will be reduced to 3% as a one-time initiative, while the decision about the abolishment of party blocks (electoral coalitions) will remain intact.