(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 the October parliamentary elections were illegitimate.
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“There is no legitimate parliament therefore there is no legitimate president or inauguration. This is why I am staying as your president,” Zourabichvili said in 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 remaining in the country, national unity has also been achieved here,” she said.
Georgian police and special forces cleared protesters and barricades from the main street of Tbilisi after clashes sparked by the ruling party’s announcement this week that it will delay talks on European Union membership until 2028.
Police said early Saturday that 107 people had been detained. At least 13 reporters have been injured, it said earlier. The total number of people held isn’t clear, according to the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association. The special investigation service said it has started a probe into law enforcement officers who prevented reporters from doing their jobs.
While Zourabichvili laid responsibility for the escalation of violence on the leadership of law enforcement forces, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, a member of the ruling party, blamed “radicals and their foreign chiefs” for the clashes at a press conference on Saturday.
“We call on foreign entities to cease encouraging violent and unfounded protests that foster anti-European sentiments in Georgian society,” he said. “Georgia is a state with strong institutions that is steadily advancing on the path to European integration.”
Kobakhidze said a repetition of the Ukrainian Maidan, a reference to protests in Kyiv in 2013 when then-President Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign and association agreement with EU and was toppled by popular protests, wasn’t possible in Georgia.
The ruling Georgian Dream party this week chose Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former soccer player and current lawmaker, to be their presidential candidate in the Dec. 14 election to replace pro-Europe Zourabichvili. The president, whose role is largely ceremonial, will be chosen by the country’s Electoral College consisting of 300 people, including all members of parliament, under constitutional changes taking effect this year.
The protesters said they plan fresh demonstrations on Saturday night at new places in Georgian capital.
Georgian Dream, which was founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, won the October parliamentary elections to extend its 12-year rule by four more years, according to the Central Election Commission. Opposition lawmakers who back a pro-European charter are boycotting the new parliament, alleging fraud in the vote.
Weeks of rallies followed the election, with law enforcement twice breaking up an opposition camp in the center of Tbilisi. Opposition blocs had called on supporters to protest again on Friday.
Georgia applied to join the EU in 2022, along with Ukraine and Moldova, but hasn’t yet formally agreed to open the years-long process of negotiating membership.
–With assistance from Yuliya Fedorinova.
(Updates with the president’s comments in the first three paragraphs)
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