Georgia’s President Salome Zourabichvili addresses crowds during Independence Day celebrations in Tbilisi, Georgia, 26 May 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE / IRAKLI GEDENIDZE / POOL
Pro-European Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili restated her determination to remain in her post on Saturday, just hours before the country’s politicians elected a far-right anti-Western former footballer to replace her as Georgia’s head of state, according to independent Telegram news channel SOVA Georgia.
For the first time, the post of Georgia’s largely ceremonial president was filled by a special electoral college comprising some 300 elected officials rather than by popular vote as it has been in the past.
The winner and sole nominee for the post, Mikhail Kavelashvili, is a former footballer who entered politics in 2016 when he became an MP for the ruling Georgian Dream party. He is now due to be inaugurated on 29 December.
A group of Georgians converged outside the parliament building on Saturday and held up their university diplomas in protest at the fact that that Kavelashvili, who once played for British football team Manchester City, is not known to have completed any form of higher education.
Zourabichvili called the election, which comes just two months after parliamentary elections that many observers and analysts have agreed were rigged in favour of Georgian Dream, “a provocation or a parody” and pledged to remain in post as “the country definitely needs one legitimate institution”. She also reiterated her call for fresh parliamentary elections.
During her six-year presidential term, Zourabichvili has increasingly emerged as a figurehead for the pro-European Georgian opposition, earning her the enmity of the increasingly authoritarian Georgian Dream party, who many Georgians now fear will lead the country back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.
