A cow rests in view of Bagrati Cathedral outside the city of Kutaisi, western Georgia. Photo CC-by-00: Candoyi / Pixabay. Some rights reserved.Constitutional reform is afoot in Georgia. Many observers worry that new amendments to the electoral system may help entrench the parliamentary majority of the ruling party Georgian Dream, which claimed victory at the ballot boxes last October. This week, the Georgian parliament started discussing a new amendment restricting the sale of agricultural land to foreign citizens. It’s a move that has raised less of a stir – but nonetheless could have important repercussions.
Free Georgia, free land
Following the collapse of the USSR, most people in Georgia received small plots of land from the government of first president Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The state granted individuals exclusive usage of these modest plots, though it was not until 1996 that Eduard Shevardnadze’s government conferred ownership on their users. Nevertheless, land records remaind patchy, and disputes were not uncommon.
Along came the reformist government of Mikheil Saakashvili, which in 2007 instituted a digital record of land ownership, helping to streamline the sale of these small plots; the Georgian Dream government has gone further, utilising potentially risky blockchain technology to develop a land register.
