GEORGIA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM
Shortly after the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war, the Georgian government declared the launch of a “new wave” of democratic reforms to better balance branches of government, strengthen judicial independence and private property, and increase media freedom. The cornerstone of this effort was to be a constitutional reform that would devolve power away from Georgia’s traditionally strong presidency. After sixteen months of development, deliberation, and discussion, Georgia’s parliament approved a set of far-reaching constitutional amendments on October 15, 2010. These will go into effect in 2013, after Georgia’s next round of parliamentary and presidential elections.
BACKGROUND: Upon coming to power in 2004, Georgia’s new president Mikheil Saakashvili strengthened the country’s already powerful executive branch, particularly via a wide-ranging right of parliamentary dissolution that hangs over the legislature in the event it refuses to support presidential-appointed governments, legislation, and even budgets. As part of its postwar reforms, the government proposed piecemeal changes to Georgia’s political structure, but it ultimately launched a more fundamental reform process in response to the opposition street protests of spring 2009, which were led by Georgia’s non-parliamentary opposition (many of whom were boycotting seats in parliament) with the aim of forcing Saakashvili to resign. In March 2009, parliamentary opposition leader Giorgi Targamadze floated the idea of convening a constitutional “forum” to reshape Georgia's legislative foundations. The idea took shape that June as the State Constitutional Commission, in which parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition parties were invited to participate (the latter declined), as well as NGOs, legal experts, and other scholars. A former constitutional court chairman, Avtandil Demetrashvili, was selected to head the Commission.
After nearly a year of deliberation, the Commission produced a first draft of the amendments in May 2010, and it released its final draft in mid-July. Feedback by domestic and international constitutional experts, NGOs, and the parliamentary opposition led to proposals for further changes. While parliament approved the July version of the amendments in the first of three required readings on September 24, Minister of Justice Zurab Adeishvili signaled the government’s approval for making more changes advocated by the Venice Commission (the Council of Europe’s constitutional advisory group) and opposition lawmakers. Several improvements were introduced in the second reading on October 1, and parliament approved the amendments with a few further adjustments in its final reading of October 15.
From an institutional point of view, the constitutional amendments are groundbreaking. Not only do they rollback the excessive concentration of powers granted to the presidency in 2004, they make parliament the source of executive power. The political party or bloc that wins the most votes in parliamentary elections will nominate a candidate for prime minister, who must be approved by a majority of deputies. Two failed votes will give an alternative coalition of at least 40 percent of deputies the right to nominate a prime minister; a third failed vote will trigger new parliamentary elections. The government led by the prime minister will be the “supreme body of the executive branch”.
A directly elected president will remain in Georgia’s new political system. The president will have a relatively small role to play in the everyday governing of the country, and will not have the right to initiate legislation. While he or she retains veto power, a parliamentary majority will be sufficient to override the veto, rather than the 60 percent currently required.
Instead, the president will serve as “the guarantor of national independence and unity of the country,” according to the constitution. In practice, the president will serve as the kingmaker between a parliamentary majority and the government, in the event that a rift arises between them. Specifically, while the new constitution greatly reduces the president’s power to dissolve parliament, it grants him or her the discretion to do so after a parliamentary vote of no-confidence against the government. The president will be able to veto the no-confidence vote and dissolve parliament if a second vote of no-confidence fails to gain the support of 60 percent of deputies.
The president remains Georgia’s commander-in-chief and will be able to declare martial law or a state of emergency (though parliament retains the right to reject such declarations). Innovatively for Georgia, the prime minister will need to countersign nearly all the president’s legal acts – including appointments of military officers and the declaration of a state of emergency. The right to declare war remains the president’s own. Outside of war, foreign policy is to be shared by the president and government. While the latter “exercises” foreign policy, the president “represents” Georgia in foreign relations and negotiates international treaties.
IMPLICATIONS: Georgia’s new constitutional reforms are not without controversy. While the government held a series of public discussions on the draft, these were held in the slow summer season and the government dismissed calls for lengthier debate. Opposition parties that refused to take part in the Constitutional Commission denounced the reforms and called on the government to postpone making changes to the constitution until after the 2012 parliamentary elections. While the Venice Commission was generally supportive of the amendments, its conclusion coincides with an alternative view within Georgian civil society that constitutional reforms have not gone far enough toward establishing parliamentary rule.
Such a view is concerned less with the relationship between the separately-elected institutions of president and parliament than with the relationship between parliament and prime minister. Under the new system, the Georgian parliament concedes budget-making authority to its chosen government. If parliament loses confidence in the government, it will not be able to replace the latter without a 60 percent majority (and risks dissolution if it tries), so long as the prime minister enjoys the support of the president. Finally, the prime minister enjoys the right to trigger a no-confidence vote if parliament refuses to pass legislation that it submits. In practice, this means that only a parliamentary majority of 60 percent can refuse to pass government-sponsored legislation without risking dissolution.
As for the specter of government paralysis in such a hybrid “parliamentary-presidential” system (à la post-Orange Revolution Ukraine), the main ambiguities that the Venice Commission has noted lay not in the realm of domestic policy but foreign policy, where the division of powers between the president and the government remains unclear.
The most common objection to the constitutional reforms is that they pave the way for President Saakashvili to constitutionally extend his rule by enabling him to assume the post of prime minister after his presidential term expires in 2013. With no law barring an outgoing president from assuming another executive office, parliament could conceivably select Saakashvili as Georgia’s next prime minister.
Such an outcome is based on at least two assumptions: that the ruling United National Movement (UNM) will be in a position to select the prime minister after 2012 parliamentary elections, and that UNM leaders will support such a move. The first of these assumptions is largely irrelevant, however, while the second may be unwarranted.
CONCLUSIONS: The UNM’s political dominance in Georgia – and the absence of real multiparty democracy, in which incumbent authorities are periodically compelled to concede power to their opponents – is not something that can be “fixed” by constitutional reform alone, be it this reform or any other. Such change must be accompanied by continued reforms in the electoral, judicial, internal security, and media spheres, as well as by the longer-term decoupling of economic power from political incumbency. In any case, endowing parliament with greater powers remains preferable to keeping a “strongman” presidency intact under contemporary conditions of single party political hegemony. It might even help spur opposition parties and their supporters to a stronger showing in 2012 by raising the stakes of parliamentary elections.
Moreover, the UNM has evolved as a political machine since 2003, when voters were asked to support the so-called “Saakashvili-National Movement.” The ruling party’s leadership contains a number of strong and ambitious personalities who are eyeing the prime ministerial and presidential posts. After what will have been almost a decade of Saakashvili rule, it is not evident that other leading members of the UNM will agree to support his candidacy for prime minister. Even Saakashvili, while not ruling out a run for the premiership, has given no sign that he really intends to try to stay on. In the end, Saakashvili may be driven by a sentiment of a different sort – that by ushering in such grand constitutional change, he will assure his place in history as the last “great man” of Georgian politics.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Cory Welt is Associate Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies and Professorial Lecturer of International Affairs at The George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
