Outgoing president Salome Zourabišvili initially rejected the election of a new president and called it illegitimate.
Despite several weeks of protests, the inauguration of the sixth Georgian president, Mikhail Kavelashvili, will take place on Sunday. However, outgoing head of state Salome Zourabišvili and the pro-Western opposition called his election illegitimate, reports TASR according to the DPA and TASS agencies.
Kavelashvili was elected president by the Georgian parliament in a controversial process – through the so-called of the electorate. The 300-member body elected the 53-year-old former footballer with 224 votes for the next five-year term.
According to the Georgian constitution, the newly elected president assumes presidential powers by taking an oath. Then Zurabishvili should resign. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobachidze has repeatedly warned the outgoing president that if she refuses to leave the presidential palace after the inauguration, she will be investigated for illegal seizure of a state institution, TASS reminds.
The president eventually left
The outgoing president of Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili, announced on Sunday that she will leave the presidential palace. TASR refers to AFP and TASS agencies.
“I will leave this place (the presidential palace),” Zurabishvili said at the demonstration, addressing her supporters who had been gathering in front of the presidential palace since morning. However, before swearing in the sixth president of Georgia, Kavelashvili, she vowed to fight on and, according to her, would continue considers her to be the “only legitimate president” of the country.
In Georgia, thousands of people have been demonstrating daily for several weeks for a return to the country’s pro-European policy and for a repeat of the October parliamentary elections, in which the ruling Georgian Dream party won. Protesters fear that the party is too close to Russia, DPA states. On Saturday afternoon, thousands of protesters with Georgian and EU flags lined the Kura river embankment and several bridges to form a chain several kilometers long. The president also joined them. Similar rallies were also held in cities across the country, local media reported.
