(Bloomberg) — Georgia’s Salome Zourabichvili vowed to stay on as the country’s president and defy the ruling party’s plan to replace her, saying October’s parliamentary elections were illegal.
Most read from Bloomberg
“There is no legitimate parliament and therefore no legitimate president or inauguration. This is why I will remain as your president,” Zourabichvili said in a televised address on Saturday after a second night of violent clashes between protesters and police in the capital Tbilisi.
“I want to tell the public that with the president, who today is the only independent and legitimate institution left in the country, national unity has also been achieved here,” she said.
Georgian police and special forces have cleared protesters and barricades from Tbilisi’s main street after clashes sparked by the ruling party’s announcement this week that it will postpone European Union membership talks until 2028.
Police said early Saturday that 107 people had been arrested. At least 13 reporters were injured, it said earlier. The total number of people being detained is not clear, according to the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. The Special Investigation Agency said it has begun an investigation into law enforcement officers who prevented reporters from doing their work.
While Zourabichvili blamed the escalation of violence on the leadership of law enforcement agencies, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, a member of the ruling party, blamed “radicals and their foreign leaders” for the clashes at a news conference on Saturday.
“We call on foreign entities to stop encouraging violent and unfounded protests that promote anti-European sentiments in Georgian society,” he said. “Georgia is a state with strong institutions that is making steady progress on the path to European integration.”
Kobakhidze said a repeat of the Ukrainian Maidan, a reference to the 2013 protests in Kiev when then-President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign an association agreement with the EU and was overthrown by popular protests, was not possible in Georgia.
The ruling Georgian Dream party this week chose Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former footballer and current member of parliament, as their presidential candidate in the December 14 elections, replacing the pro-European Zourabichvili. The president, whose role is largely ceremonial, will be chosen by the country’s electoral college of 300 people, including all members of parliament, under constitutional changes that come into effect this year.
The demonstrators said they were planning new demonstrations in new locations in the Georgian capital on Saturday evening.
Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, won October’s parliamentary elections, extending his 12-year rule for another four years, the Central Election Commission said. Opposition lawmakers who support a pro-European charter are boycotting the new parliament, claiming election fraud.
The elections were followed by weeks of demonstrations, with law enforcement officers twice breaking up an opposition camp in central Tbilisi. Opposition blocs had called on their supporters to protest again on Friday.
Georgia, along with Ukraine and Moldova, has applied to join the EU in 2022, but has not yet formally agreed to open the year-long membership negotiation process.
–With help from Yuliya Fedorinova.
(Updates with the President’s comments in the first three paragraphs)
Most read from Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 BloombergLP
