Georgia’s governing lawmakers handed the presidency to a former soccer star turned far-right politician on Saturday, establishing a standoff with the sitting president and deepening the nation’s political turmoil after weeks of protests and a disputed parliamentary election.
Mikheil Kavelashvili, 53, a former striker for the Manchester City soccer crew, was the only candidate for the put up, and the primary to be chosen by an electoral school that changed direct presidential elections seven years in the past.
A coalition of opposition events boycotted the vote, as a result of they are saying the parliamentary elections in late October have been marred by allegations of vote shopping for, intimidation and violence. But Mr. Kavelashvili was backed by the conservative Georgian Dream celebration, which has held a majority in Parliament for over a decade and steered the small Caucasus nation away from the European Union and nearer to Russia and China.
The vote units up a standoff between Mr. Kavelashvili, who’s to imagine workplace in 15 days, and the departing president, Salome Zourabichvili, who has sided with the opposition and vowed to remain in workplace till new elections are held. In a put up on X, she known as the outcome a “mockery of democracy,” evaluating it to the best way Georgia’s leaders have been chosen when the nation was a part of the Soviet Union.
It is unclear what she may do to stop Mr. Kavelashvili from taking his seat. On Nov. 30, she insisted that “there will probably be no inauguration and my mandate continues.” But on Dec. 3, Georgia’s constitutional courtroom rejected a problem to the elections filed by Ms. Zourabichvili and opposition teams.
Ms. Zourabichvili, who was elected by Georgia’s closing widespread vote for president, is pro-Western, whereas Mr. Kavelashvili espouses strongly anti-Western views. He claimed a number of occasions this yr that Western intelligence businesses have been conspiring to push Georgia into battle with Moscow, which dominated Georgia as a part of the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, till 1991.
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