Georgia’s sixth President will be elected on December 14, as decided on November 26 at the Parliament’s plenary session, with the exclusive participation of the Georgian Dream MPs, with 80 votes in favor and none against. The inauguration of the new President will take place on December 29. The new President will be elected for a term of five years.
On November 25 the Georgian Dream party convened the first session of the Parliament despite the protests outside the Parliament building, mounting evidence of systemic election fraud and the two complaints, including the President’s, to the Constitutional Court challenging the legality of the elections.
Incumbent Salome Zurabishvili is the last President elected by popular vote. Her term ends on December 16. The country’s sixth President is to be elected by a 300-member electoral college. This includes 150 members of Parliament, all 21 members of the Supreme Council of Adjara, all 20 members of the Supreme Council of Abkhazia, and 109 members of local authorities. The member electoral college will meet in the Georgian Parliament on December 14 to vote for the President. The election will be conducted by the Central Election Commission. As the legitimacy of the Parliament is being challenged by various political actors, with a relevant appeal still pending in the Constitutional Court, and as the CEC’s reputation is tarnished by evidence of numerous violations during the elections, this raises questions about the legitimacy of the new President, experts say.
The presidential candidate must receive at least two-thirds of the votes to be considered elected in the first round. If the President is not elected in the first round, a second round is held between the two candidates who received the most votes in the first round. The candidate with the most votes then wins. The Speaker sets the date for the second round. Shalva Papuashvili said at today’s session that if the second round is to be held, he will set the date for it on the same day.
The President, currently the pro-European Salome Zurabishvili, is widely seen as the last remaining state institution not under the influence and in the service of the ruling party.
For the GD, Presidents have been a particular headache. Leaving aside the third President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was still in office when GD won elections in 2012 and was representing a United National Movement- the archnemesis of the Georgian Dream, the fourth and fifth Presidents, Giorgi Margvelashvili and Salome Zurabishvili, who initially emerged from the ruling party turned out to be “prodigal children” and eventually diverged and clashed with its authoritarian agenda.
GD said it will now be particularly cautious about picking a candidate who will remain firmly under party control. “The presidential candidate will certainly be the person in whom everyone will be sure that he/she serves the homeland…The most important thing is that he/she is Georgian, and we are not talking only about genetics and citizenship…” Mamuka Mdinaradze told journalists.
Majority leader Mamuka Mdinaradze said the ruling party has already decided on the presidential candidate it will nominate. He ruled out the nomination of Bidzina Ivanishvili. There have been reports from the opposition-leaning Mtavari TV that the GD would nominate former Prime Minister and current ruling party leader Irakli Garibashvili and Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, a son of Georgia’s first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia. Today, Mdinaradze denied both nominations.