Frankly speaking, it doesn't matter much whether this law will be withdrawn or not, because the whole picture is disturbing, - the President of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili said in an interview with Bloomberg, when she answered a question whether she thinks it is still possible to suspend or withdraw the law "On transparency of foreign influence".
"It was withdrawn last year, but was re-introduced despite a promise never to do so again. Now it doesn't really matter if they withdraw the law or not, because the whole picture is disturbing. There are other laws that are contrary to the recommendations issued by the European Union in order to be able to open accession negotiations. So, on the one hand there is a series of laws that contradict the absence of laws that are needed in the area where we are being asked to make progress, and the third part is the rhetoric that is anti-Western, anti-European. This rhetoric comes from the ruling party, their honorable president Ivanishvili, from all the leaders, because they all speak the same language, and they call our partners, who have been building our state, its independence and its development for 30 years, "agents of a foreign country" who want to destroy the country, destabilize it, overthrow the government. This is a very Russian language. This is what Russia keeps repeating," the President said.
According to her, the elections planned in October in Georgia will be a kind of referendum regarding the direction the Georgian people want to go.
"We need to have the will of the people very clearly expressed in the elections to prove that the path they want is the path to Europe and nothing else. This will be a kind of referendum," the President said.
When asked what she thinks the ruling party needs this law for, the President answered that "this question should be asked to the government".
"If they had not introduced this law, they would have a chance to win the elections. Because their language until now, their narrative until last December was: we are moving towards the European Union, we are the ones who made it possible, and suddenly we have a narrative that you can hear in Ivanishvili's April 29 speech, which is a declaration of war on our Western, European partners”, the President noted.
