The country has been torn since the ruling Georgian Dream party declared victory in the October 26 legislative elections, which pro-EU opposition parties denounced as marred by irregularities.
Salomé Zourabichvil, the pro-European Georgian president, announced on Saturday that she would refuse to leave her post – while her mandate ends this year – as long as new legislative elections do not take place in this country in the midst of a political crisis. “As long as there are no new elections and a Parliament that elects a new president according to new rules, my mandate will continue“, she declared in an exclusive interview with AFP.
The latter are boycotting the new parliament, and Ms. Zourabichvili sought to have the election results annulled by the Constitutional Court. “No one outside of Georgia, among our democratic partners, recognized the elections», underlines Ms. Zourabichvili who presents herself as the “only legitimate institution in the country».
An election taken for granted
The newly elected Parliament, which she considers illegitimate, announced that it would elect the next president on December 14 and that his inauguration for a five-year term would take place on December 29. Last week, Georgian Dream nominated Mikheil Kavelachvili, a former footballer who entered politics on the far right, as its candidate for this position.
Under constitutional changes imposed by that party in 2017, the president will for the first time be chosen by an electoral college rather than a popular vote. With the Georgian dream controlling the electoral college, Mr. Kavelashvili's election is considered a given.
Demonstrations and protests
But for Ms. Zourabichvili, 72, “when elections do not reflect the will of the people, then Parliament is not legitimate, nor the government, nor the president they must elect».
A former French diplomat born in Paris, Ms. Zourabichvili announced that she had set up a “conseil national» composed of opposition parties and representatives of civil society, which will ensure “stability in this country”. “I will be the representative of this legitimate and stable transition“, she said, sending this message to the international community: “No relations with illegitimate representatives of this country. Do business with us, we represent the people of Georgia».
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«I am very optimistic“, she continued, “because something is happening here that we have not seen in the post-Soviet space, that is to say a society which takes its future into its own hands“. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets for a month to protest alleged electoral fraud and support the president's efforts to hold new elections.
The European question
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze's statement on Thursday that EU candidate Georgia will not seek to open accession negotiations with the European Union before 2028 has sparked a new wave of protests. Dozens of people were arrested. On Saturday evening, clashes broke out between pro-EU demonstrators and police in front of the parliament in Tbilisi.
After the October vote, a group of election observers nationwide said they had evidence of a complex system of large-scale fraud. What Georgian Dream denied. In power for more than a decade, this party is accused by its detractors of distancing the country from the EU and bringing it closer to Russia.
Brussels demanded an investigation into what it called “graves» irregularities and said she would send a mission to Tbilisi in the coming weeks. This EU mission must “help us set up new elections“, underlined Ms. Zourabichvili. “We are very confident that our partners will be where the Georgian population is“, she concluded, referring to Brussels and Washington.
