There is an expression, “laws are made to be broken”. GT has interviewed Zakaria Kutsnashvili, a lawyer, to try and find out if the President of Georgia has violated the law by failing to uphold the Constitution, as each President guarantees to do on their inauguration.

Q: Do you think the President has violated the Constitution or not?

A: There are very frequent violations of the Constitution by the President.

Q: Which clauses do you mean?

A: The President very often violates Clause 17, which is about granting Georgian citizenship. The President has the right to grant Georgian citizenship to people under two conditions: firstly, that person must have special merit for Georgia and secondly granting them citizenship must be in the interests of the State. We can find hundreds of cases in which neither of these conditions has been taken into account.

Can granting Georgian citizenship to Bendukidze be considered as being in the interests of the State, when this person had no merit for Georgia? Maybe someone will say that after Bendukidze became a Minister has served the interests of the State to some extent but after he became a Minister and “General of Northern Relations” the whole of Georgian society suffered rather than profited. If we check all the President’s grants of citizenship to foreign citizens we will find that maybe 5 people who satisfy all the demands of the Constitution have been allowed to become citizens. The President ignores this clause of the Constitution.

Q: When did the President of Georgia commit the most Constitutional violations?

A: He made many during the August war. Clause 73 of the Georgian Constitution was violated when the President of Georgia declared martial law not on the day the conflict began but the next day. It says in the first article of Clause 73 that in case of an armed attack on Georgia the President of Georgia must declare martial law, make peace when conditions for doing so exist and submit these decision to Parliament within 48 hours for approval. They are cheating the public by saying that the President must declare martial law during the 48 hours after a conflict breaks out, in fact he must do so immediately.

The President of Georgia was saying on 7, 8 and 9 August that we controlled the Tskhinvali region and were heading towards the Roki Tunnel. Was it the right information that on 7,8 and 9 August we were controlling everything? An evacuation of our citizens should have been implemented, but information agencies were saying that Georgian soldiers were heading towards the Roki Tunnel. Due to this 850 people died.

The Sarkozy-Medvedev-Saakashvili ceasefire agreement was of a military character and concerns military forces and the departing of the two sides. According to the first article of Clause 65 of the Georgian Constitution the Georgian Parliament must ratify or reject international treaties and agreements. The President of Georgia did not consider this article of the Georgian Constitution at all and signed the military treaty regardless. He did not send the agreement to Parliament for ratification and began to fulfill its terms, throwing out the military forces, without having the authority to do so.

In Clause 65 of the Constitution it says that besides the international agreements and treaties all such international agreement and treaties which: a) consider the entrance of Georgia into international organisations or alliances between states, b) are of a military character, c) concern the territorial integrity of the state or changing the borders of the state, d) are connected with the state issuing and receiving loans and e) Demand a change of interstate law or the adopting of laws and acts having the power of law in order to fulfill international obligations undertaken by the state must also nbe ratified by Parliament. The President has ignored this too.

Q: What kind of media freedom is stipulated in the Constitution and what part should the President play in ensuring it?

A: Clause 24 of the Georgian Constitution says that mass information sources are free to act and censorship of them is inadmissible. In this area the President defies the Georgian Constitution most openly and appoints his officials to be the heads of mass information resources.