CHANGES IN GEORGIAN CONSTITUTIONALISM: CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE PRESIDENT AND THE GOVERNMENT AND SPECIFICITIES OF THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIP FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF 2010 CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM

Abstract

On October 15, 2010, the Parliament of Georgia adopted amendments to the Constitution of Georgia, which marked completion of the Constitutional Reform initiated in 2009. With these amendments the Basic Law of the country, which since its initial adoption has often undertook broad and significant changes, has now developed almost into a new Constitution. The ground for stating this is that the amendments change the Constitution towards the parliamentary model of government, or to say more precisely, into the mixed model which is abundantly filled with the elements characteristic to a parliamentary republic.

The new provisions of the Constitution, establishing different rules for regulating relations among the government branches, will enter into force in October, 2013 from the moment of inauguration of the President elected through regular presidential elections. Therefore, there is plenty of time to analyze and consider the views and opinions submitted by the representatives of academic, political and other fields regarding the above mentioned amendments into the Constitution.

In the present article we will not analyze the existing provisions regarding the powers of the President and Government of Georgia, rather the field of our interest lies with the constitutional amendments regarding the constitutional institutions of the Head of the State, and the Executive. Additionally, while reviewing the constitutional amendments related to the above mentioned institutions, we will emphasize interrelations of these two bodies, rather than relations of each of them with the legislative branch, as the peculiarities of interrelationship between the President and the Government define by large the constitutional model.

It should also be noted, that the article presents the results of the Constitutional Reform in the following manner:

a) By analyzing the government model developed as a result of the Constitutional Reform and discussing relevant paragraphs of the Venice Commission’s Opinion of October 15-16, 2010; b) Through taking into account the main goals of the Constitutional Reform, one of them being distancing the President from the Executive powers, as the result of which the Government would become the supreme executive body and would develop into an independent branch with effective constitutional guarantees.