Mikheil Kavelashvili. Photo: News Georgia
Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, has nominated former footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili for the post of president, the party’s founder and honorary chair Bidzina Ivanishvili announced on Wednesday.
Kavelashvili, 53, a former professional footballer who once played for Georgia’s national team as well as Premier League club Manchester City, entered politics in 2016 as an MP for Georgian Dream. Since then, he has become one of the country’s most ardent critics of the West.
He was a co-founder of the People’s Power party in 2022, which is known for its anti-Western rhetoric and support for so-called “traditional values”, and which last year drafted the controversial foreign agents law, requiring organisations that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, mirroring a similar law in Russia used to silence dissent.
“I will do everything to unite Georgian society around our national interests, our national identity, our values, and the idea of Georgia’s independence,” Kavelashvili told journalists on Wednesday.
“Honesty, fairness, patriotism and integrity are the qualities that distinguish Mikheil Kavelashvili,” Ivanishvili said, describing him as the “best embodiment of the Georgian man” and somebody who would be able to “fully restore” dignity to the office of the presidency.
The incumbent Georgian President, Salome Zourabichvili, has become a thorn in Ivanishvili’s side during her six-year presidential term, most recently after she declared the new parliament to be unconstitutional and sought to annul the results of last month’s parliamentary election in which Georgian Dream claimed a widely contested victory.
Georgia’s largely ceremonial head of state will this year for the first time be elected by a 300-seat electoral college consisting of members of parliament, municipal councils and regional legislatures rather than by popular vote. Georgian Dream’s majority in the college makes Kavelashvili’s approval next month all but certain.
