Georgia’s Elects Only Recommended Presidential Candidate

Georgia’s ruling party succeeded on Saturday in electing a far-right loyalist as president in a disputed election process, just as the country’s constitutional crisis deepens and weeks of massive pro-European Union protests continue. The country has been in turmoil since the ruling Georgian Dream party won a disputed October parliamentary election. The Georgian Dream party’s decision last month to postpone EU membership negotiations triggered a new round of mass rallies.

Giorgi Kalandishvili, chairman of the Central Election Commission of Georgia, said that the electoral college controlled by the ruling party and boycotted by the opposition party elected Mikheil Kavelashvili as the country’s next president with 224 votes for a term of Five years. The president is a largely symbolic head of state, with executive power vested in parliament and the prime minister.

The opposition denounced Saturday’s election as “illegitimate” and said current President Salome Zourabichvili remained Georgia’s only legitimate leader. The pro-Western Rabishvili, at odds with the Georgian Dream party, has refused to step down and demanded new parliamentary elections, paving the way for a constitutional showdown. Protesters began gathering outside the Georgia Capitol on Saturday morning, and police cordoned off the building with plans to hold a rally that night.

AFP reporters witnessed demonstrators sharing tea to keep warm on a cold morning, with water cannons from security forces parked nearby. “Georgia has never lost its sense of humor and celebrates the election of a football player as president,” Zurabishvili wrote on social media. She shared a video of protesters playing football in the snow, an apparent dig at Kaverashvili.

Kavelashvili, 53, was a professional football player. When he was young, he played for Manchester City in the English Premier League and several Swiss Premier League clubs, where he served as a forward.

Zurabishvili pointed out that “a year ago, Georgia received (EU) candidate status, and today, a central committee similar to a ‘parliament’ has ‘elected’ a ‘only’ candidate. It is a mockery of democracy. This will never stop Georgia from following its own European path towards a democratic future!”

Zurabishvili also said, “In Georgia, Moldova, Romania and other places, Russia is using electoral interference and a variety of mixed methods to try to make these countries deviate from the path of democracy. This is a war on elections and a war on elections. A war against Europe!”

Saturday’s protests are planned in a dozen locations in Tbilisi. Thousands of pro-EU demonstrators filled the streets of the capital on Friday before gathering outside parliament for the 16th day in a row. The daughter of a Georgian refugee couple, Zurabishvili was a former French diplomat who returned to politics and is now popular among protesters, who see her as a beacon of Georgia’s desire to integrate into Europe.

Ahead of Saturday’s vote, Zurabishvili called it “a farce.” “This would be a completely unlawful, unconstitutional and illegal event,” she told a news conference. Opposition groups accuse the ruling party of rigging the Oct. 26 parliamentary vote, backsliding on democracy and bringing Tbilisi closer to Moscow, all at the expense of the Caucasus country’s constitutional accession to the European Union. At the cost of effort.

Kavelashvili, the only presidential candidate in the election, is known for his fierce anti-Western rhetoric and opposition to LGBTQ rights. Georgia dreams of abolishing direct presidential elections in 2017. With Zurabishvili refusing to step down, opposition MPs boycotting parliament and protests showing no sign of abating, the legitimacy of Kavelashvili’s election was undermined from the start.

Vakhtang Khmaladze, one of the authors of the Georgian constitution, believes that all decisions of the new parliament are invalid. He explained that this was because the new parliament approved the mandate of the newly elected members before the court ruled on the election challenge raised by the current president.