Anti-Western Ex-Footballer Appointed ‘New President’ of Georgia

The presidential election in Georgia, which for the first time was held not by direct popular vote but by the electoral college, has elected the candidate nominated by the anti-Western ruling party Georgian Dream, former footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili, as the head of state. This was reported by the BBC.

According to the InterPressNews news service in Tbilisi, Kavelashvili was the only candidate on the list. He is a representative of the ruling Georgian Dream party, a former footballer and member of parliament.

On 14 December, the Electoral College, in which the ruling party has an absolute majority, declared Kavelashvili's victory with 224 votes in favour.

In accordance with the constitutional amendments adopted after the election of the current President of Georgia Salome Zourabichvili in 2018, the format of the presidential election has changed. Currently, Georgians do not vote directly. Instead, the president is elected by a college of 300 electors. This system reduced the president's powers but increased his term in office to six years. The electoral college includes the Georgian parliament, the Supreme Council of Adjara (an autonomous region within Georgia), the Supreme Council of Abkhazia (a Georgian region occupied by Russia), and 109 members of municipal authorities from different regions of the country.

Mikheil Kavelashvili is a former footballer for Dynamo Tbilisi and Manchester City. After retiring from football, he ran for the Georgian parliament twice (in 2016 and 2020). For some time, he was a member of the Georgian Dream party, but in 2022 he left it and founded the Power of the People faction in parliament, which shares the Georgian Dream's position on key issues (including European integration and religion).

The opposition refused to nominate its candidates for the elections and declared a boycott.

According to the Georgian media outlet Sova, the four largest opposition forces in Georgia have asked the European Union not to recognise Kavelashvili's legitimacy.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili also does not recognise the election. ‘There is nothing. No one elected anyone. Nothing has happened,’ she said at a rally in Tbilisi, where participants called for the legitimacy of the presidential election to be rejected.

In the morning, several hundred people gathered in Tbilisi near the walls of the Georgian parliament, where the elections took place. Some of them came with their university diplomas as a sign that the new president does not have a university degree. People consider him unqualified to be president. The parliament building was surrounded by police.

On 28 November, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said that the country's authorities were abandoning negotiations on joining the European Union by 2028. According to him, the end of 2028 is the time when Georgia will be ready to start negotiations on joining the EU in 2030.

Earlier, the European Council announced that Georgia's integration process was effectively suspended due to the actions of the ruling Georgian Dream party, in particular, the adoption of laws on ‘foreign agents’ and restrictions on the rights of the LGBT community. In addition, the EU did not recognise the results of the parliamentary elections held on 26 October.

This was followed by a new wave of protests in Georgia. Police dispersed the protesters with water cannons and pepper spray. In total, dozens of demonstrators, journalists and security forces were injured in the clashes on 28 November. Police also detained at least 43 people.