Paata Zakareishvili Blames Transparency International (Georgia) in Political Engagement

Transparency International (TI) Georgia report regarding the eviction of IDPs gave rise to a dispute between the organization and conflict scientist Paata Zakareishvili.

According to Zakareishvili, the TI is politically engaged. “The publication refers to the oppositional parties in a negative context twice and never to the government. Moreover, Transparency International tries to justify the government. Instead of evaluating the political process, the publication should have emphasized the violations of IDPs’ rights,” – stated Paata Zakareishvili to Interpressnews.

According to Zakareishvili, he expressed his position to the project leaders at a meeting: ’’On my question they responded that I am a member of a political party. But in our country a political party member is not prohibited to be socially active and my political affiliation had nothing to do with it. This is one more sign of their political engagement.”

TI Georgia does not agree with Zakareishvili. The project analyst Lasha Gogidze explains that the political processes are mentioned only in the first paragraph of the publication and the rest of the text talks about the problems of IDPs.

“Specifically, we reviewed the problems observed during the eviction of IDPs including not informing the public. Also, the IDPs themselves did not have information on the exact date of eviction. We will continue the monitoring of the new settlement places of IDPs,” – stated Lasha Gogidze to Interpressnews.

According to Zakareishvili, TI Georgia could not observe the eviction process of IDPs in every instance because of the lack of human resources. However, they received information from the organizations that conducted monitoring, including the UN Refugee Agency, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), the Office of the Public Defender as well as the EU Monitoring Mission.

Interpressnews