“The very first steps that the incumbent President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and the late [Georgia’s Prime Minister] Zurab Zhvania took were aimed at weakening the parliament,” a leader of the Rose Revolution, the current leader of the Democratic Movement–United Georgia one Nino Burjanadze said in an E-Media interview, according to KyivWeekly.
The politician said this was a fatal error because the parliament is one of the most paramount institutions in the democratic mechanism of state administration, especially in those countries where democratic institutions are still weak and democratic trends are only coming to the fore.
When asked if she thought Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych`s team has taken the same path, Burjanadze said the current problems in Georgia: reinforcement of presidential powers, over-strengthening of the power vertical and law enforcement agencies and weakening of other public institutions could help others learn from Georgia’s mistakes and never repeat them.
