The autumn session of the parliament was officially closed after the bureau session on December 17. Now the winter vacation is still to come. An extraordinary session, which will last for two weeks, will be convened on Tuesday. At this session several important decisions should be made. “I am afraid to meet the New Year in the session hall of parliament,” stated Nino Burjanadze, the chairperson of the legislative body.

The main topic of the extraordinary session will be the budget of 2005, the discussion of which will be finished in the factions and committees in the upcoming days. It seems that the financial amnesty bill will be adopted as well. According to representatives of the parliamentary majority, the disagreement with the government has been overcome. And a consensus was reached about who should be pardoned under the amnesty.

Adopting the new tax code and bill on Higher Education should not be problematic either. But before the third hearing on these issues some members of parliament expressed their dissatisfaction.

For example, Maia Nadiradze, parliamentary majority leader, and Kote Gabashvili, head of the International Affairs Committee, dislike the education article that would rank professors.

During the second hearing of the bill Nadiradze and Gabashvili were in New Zealand and Azerbaijan respectively, therefore they have little chance to add their remarks to the final form of the bill.

The new tax code is not without its critics either. “We are about to adopt a tax code that is worse than the modern one,” said Merab Tkemaladze, one of the leaders of the rightwing opposition, who himself knows that criticism no longer has a point on the issue.

On the other hand, the broadcasting law can be still discussed. As is known, the parliamentary majority demands that public broadcasting be financed by 1.5 percent of income, but the government does not share this point of view. Zurab Zhvania, the prime minister, believes it is not reasonable to finance public broadcasting by attaching it to gross domestic product.

“This is an unpredictable source of income and it is unreasonable that the financing for public broadcasting should be attached to this.”

At the extraordinary session parliament will also discuss two legislative initiations of the president that envisage constitutional changes. The first one refers to the merging of the Ministries of Internal Affairs and Security, which bureau members do not object to. The second Saakashvili initiation refers to reducing the number of MPs to 150.

“Maybe even this amount is not necessary, as countries like us traditionally have 80-90 MPs,” the chair of parliament said, sharing the president’s point of view. According to Nino Burjanadze, from 2008 it will be written in the constitution that there will be no more than 150 members in the Georgian parliament. The same amount of MPs will be fixed only after the subject of the territorial-administrative arrangement of the country is ascertained and a new election code is adopted…

By the end of the autumn session the chairperson is already making efforts to ensure that the image of parliament is not threatened and the legislative body will become more effective. According to Burjanadze, she will not leave critical materials published in the press unanswered. She will not allow certain undisciplined MPs to taint the reputation of whole legislative body.

“When a MP does not attend sessions for four months, he is not worthy to be a MP. A move to deprive them of their rights should be placed on the agenda,” demanded the chairperson of parliament.

As an example of an undisciplined MP the name of Koba Davitashvili was pronounced. According to Vano Chkhartishvili, some members of the accounting commission do not attend sessions of the commission. Because of this the head of the Independent Single-Mandates demanded that such MPs be substituted by other MPs in the commission.

Chkhartishvili’s demand is a bit strange, as his commission on studying accounts held its first session on December 17, and the reason for Koba Davitashvili’s absence was his visit to Ukraine were is was to meet with Viktor Yuschenko.