Peculiarities Of The law adopted having a New Year “hangover” and The Problems OF Protection Of Those “Crapulent” in Georgia duringThe Transitional Period

Emzar Jgerenaia

Last year I attended some regular conference in Belorus, in Minsk. I took a keen interest in how their economy worked in conditions of absolute dictatorship and what problems their working masses confronted with.

The first thing I was told is that there was a state monopoly for vodka and that 40 varieties of the same kind of vodka – “Crystal”, if I remember it right after a hangover, are produced by the state enterprise only. The assortment is very impressive. All food stores in the city also work with old logo and design (hypermarkets are located outside the city), planned supply of products and, which is most important, with the list of strictly approved assortment. “The Book of Complaints and Proposals” is also hanging there, that is if a customer or Belarusian drunkard writes down in it that vodka with pepper or laurel aroma or of turquoise color indicated in the assortment is not sold in this particular food store, the head of this unit will be eliminated at Lukashenko’s personal initiative in accordance with the adopted law. The talk is not of price and quality control, everything is totally controlled there – but the assortment in particular.
The same used to be in the Soviet Union and in Georgia of that time. It is understandable that it used to be then, but how can it be now, in market conditions?! What is happening there is clear, but in late December here, in our country we adopted an innovative “Law on Harm and Quality of Products”, in which the following definition is openly written – “falsification of food product’s ingredients, characteristics, discrepancy in the assortment and origin in relation to the established requirements or to the data indicated in the enclosed documents and the label”. What is this and what the assortment has to do with it?? Now I think that it is obviously a technical mistake, since it was adopted on December 27 and crept in in a holiday atmosphere, but an entrepreneur has to fulfill it. By this law we protect consumers when they very much want “Nikora’s” crispy sausages, but if they are not very good “Nikora” will be punished, since this particular kind of sausages and horse-radish go with “hangover” very well. That is right! Why should we spoil a person’s pleasure, that is why it should punish … but whom??? It is clear that it must be a poor entrepreneur, in this instance “Nikora” that made a falsification and did not observe the assortment’s list. That man has had enough having a hang-over, we cannot punish him since he is already punished. It is possible there, in Belorus, but here in Georgia, in a country with free economy it is awkward, and there is hope that we shall correct it after the New Year hangover at the spring session.