Says Mathew Olsen, the United States Assistant Attorney General for National Security: “The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA requires certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities or other activities specified under the statute to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents.”
If the above is true for what Georgia’s ruling party are trying to pass, then the analogous bill that is going to be scrutinized on various relevant floors of the country’s legislative body before it is introduced into the parliament for further treatment, needs to be thoroughly discussed in every extant detail so that nobody has any doubt about even one letter of the future law. We don’t need to incriminate each other on whether the upcoming bill is a Russian, American or Manchurian piece of regulation: We just need to sit down, peruse the text, reading into its every word thoroughly and attentively, and put on the table a pertinently, wisely and patiently performed comparative analysis of the reviled document, and only after this engage in reasonable dialog as to whether this nation needs such a law or not. Why is there so much ado about nothing until it is made absolutely clear and transparent what kind of paper we are dealing with?
No, the nation is not familiar with the full text of the presumable law. Couldn’t we take the American, Russian and Georgian texts of the project, spread them on a big round table, and read into the damned thing to do the due juxtapositions, thus killing the vain unwanted controversy on the subject? And do so openly, on the television, with the participation of our tired and fed-up public? Why should the entire nation listen to those futile verbose clashes and incriminations between the interested politicians, whose personal attitudes have lately been so radicalized that even their own families can’t recognize them when they’re in their daggers-drawn poses in parliament.
So unimaginably simple, all that needs to be done is to demonstrate to our nice, honest, expectant, patient and still malleable people the entire authentic content of the bill, allowing them to physically and mentally establish the equivalence or discrepancy of the text with similar texts working in other countries. No name-calling, no expletives, no cursing and dirty tricks! Just business! Isn’t it high time for us, the EU-candidate nation, to turn ourselves into something real and meaningful?
Contemporary reason dictates that in our modern times, any human movement should be full of accurate cause and consistent practicability. The great Thomas Jefferson is thought to have said that if a law is unjust, a person is not only in their right to disobey it, but is indeed obligated to do so. Granted! But we also have to be adamantly sure that the law we want to defy is truly unjust, and not needed, and for us to know the truth in that regard, we have to do our due diligence and research to know exactly what we are up against.
Wouldn’t this be healthier than wasting our valuable time on demonstrations and manifestations? Wouldn’t this be fairer than going vulgar with those scurrilous obscenities used by our “honorable” legislators as they perform slanderous attacks against each other? Why do we need any law in principle? To be more functional as a society, not vice-versa!
There is always a way when there is a will. Let our lawmakers give us, the people, a true lesson on lawmaking, which the civilized world around us is used to practicing, doing so by means of versing their respective electorate, who are ready to listen to them day and night if they come out sounding wise, clear and straightforward. It is, after all, one of the strongest demands of democracy that people have the right to know from A to Z under what kind of rules and regulations the government wants them to live and work, to be familiar with every single word of any bill they want to push into law. Democracy is very easy to live by if it is used appropriately, thanks to that famous rule of law of ours.
Op-Ed by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
