President Salome Zurabishvili has filed a challenge with Georgia's Constitutional Court over the validity of the recently passed "transparency of foreign influence" law, which has driven a wedge between the government and a considerable segment of society and drawn angry repercussions from Tbilisi's Western partners.
In a statement on the presidency's official website announcing its first-ever lawsuit before the court, Zurabishvili aide Giorgi Mskhiladze adopted the language of protesters to describe the law passed in late May over a presidential veto as "the so-called Russian law."
The law is "unconstitutional" and it contradicts the Georgian Constitution's Article 78, he said, which orders constitutional bodies including the government to "take all measures within the scope of their competences to ensure the full integration of Georgia into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”
"The lawsuit also challenges a number of norms of the law, which violate a number of basic rights guaranteed by the constitution," the statement said. "With this lawsuit, the president requests the suspension of the mentioned law and its final cancellation."
Zurabishvili has had a dramatic falling out with the governing Georgian Dream party since it backed her candidacy for president in 2018, culminating in an embarrassing squabble over her right to represent Georgia abroad and then an ultimately failed impeachment in 2023.
The government's enactment of the law, which imposes tight controls on foreign-funded media and NGOs that get more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad, came one year after it originally abandoned a similar bill under public pressure.
SEE ALSO: Interview: Georgian Dream 'Likely' To Try To Steal Election, But Its Support Is Deeper Than Many ThinkThis year's battle sparked massive street protests and intensified Zurabishvili's clash with the government over what she and demonstrators insist is fealty to their post-Soviet country's commitment to integration with the West.
When she vetoed the foreign-agent bill in mid-May, Zurabishvili called it "a Russian law in essence and spirit, which contradicts our constitution and all European standards" and "an obstacle on our European path."
Opponents have pointed to its similarity to legislation used by President Vladimir Putin to crush dissent in Russia and stifle independent institutions, prompting Georgians to refer to the measure as "the Russian law."
Georgian Dream and its alliance with the Democratic Georgia party hold 84 of the parliament's 150 seats. Lawmakers voted 84-4 to override Zurabishvili's veto in late May.
Brussels has paused ongoing EU accession negotiations with Tbilisi and the United States has undertaken a "comprehensive review" of relations with Georgia over the law's passage.
On July 15, Georgia's public defender, Levan Ioseliani, repeated his criticism of the "foreign influence" law and said his office would "definitely" be involved in the Constitutional Court's review.
Georgian Dream has insisted that it remains committed to joining Western institutions and the law was only meant to increase transparency on NGO funding.
Alongside the Constitutional Court challenge, Zurabishvili's office announced on July 15 the appointment of Kakha Tsikarishvili to the country's High Council of Justice, where the president gets to appoint one member.
Georgia's civil society has for years sought to move the country away from the influence of Russia, which still maintains thousands of troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway Georgian regions that Moscow recognized as independent states following a five-day war with Tbilisi in 2008.