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this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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It's not the same law. FARA (which is not without criticism either) differs significantly in scope. They "translated" it, and then tacked on a lot of other stuff. The Georgian law would require all NGOs to disclose all funding. You might see why people may be uncomfortable with donating to a group which is against something the government wants to do. It risks stifling freedom of speech and it restricts freedom of capital, which is a requirement for being in the EU.
While transparancy in politics is good, note that political parties don't face the same scrutiny under this law. Selectively enforcing transparency can be used to go after political dissenters. This is how it started in Russia; first it was just disclosure, which already led to harassment and dismissal of anything a group put out. Then additional measures were passed to prohibit these groups' speech. And I haven't even touched upon the possibility of selectively prosecuting dissenting parties for supposed violations of this law, which could be very costly and difficult to fight.
In countries with strong rule of law and low corruption, these laws are tricky to get right. In countries that have more problems, they can be quite dangerous. Georgia has a complicated history with plenty of turmoil. I can see why there's not much faith that the Georgian government will not abuse this law to stifle dissent.
It's not like there aren't legitimate arguments in favour of this law, and it's not like those NGOs have all been of exemplary behaviour. But I do wonder if there aren't better ways of fighting malicious foreign influence than a law that feels like a catch-all method of suppressing any dissenting groups (which the FARA act is also criticised for, and imo that should be significantly amended too).
The flip side here is that western NGOs are running wild in Georgia
And this is precisely the playbook the west used in Ukraine with the results we can all see now. If this law helps prevent a maidan style coup that turns Georgia into a US proxy, then it's absolutely a good thing. So, yeah this law can be abused, but the reality is that Georgia is that it's necessary to prevent political capture of the country by western interests.
I would think it's far more likely that a controversial law like this would trigger a Maidan-style coup, no? Or that if this law does end up frustrating EU accession talks, the population may be swayed to coup the government if they don't follow up on their promise to become an EU member?
The current ruling party is still pro-EU and aims to become a member by 2030, which follows the large support for EU membership in Georgia. I'm not sure if the "political capture of the country by western interests" is relevant here, seeing as they are already fairly west-aligned.
I guess we'll see how it plays out, but my guess would be that Georgia isn't quite where Ukraine was yet, and hence why they want to prevent that eventuality while that's still possible to do. Wanting to join EU and wanting to be sovereign are two separate concerns. Clearly, sovereignty is becoming a sharper issue than joining the EU right now. The picture that the interview I linked above paints is pretty wild, so I don't really find it surprising that they want to put an end to that. Also, the fact that EU politicians have been prancing at the rallies against the law kind of gives the game away.