Georgia Elects Salome Zurabishvili as First Woman President
Ex-diplomat, Salome Zurabishvili, hailed her election as Georgia’s first woman president on Thursday but opposition leaders denounced the result as fraud and called for protests.
With all votes counted, the country’s election commission said the French-born Zurabishvili, backed by the ruling Georgian Dream party, had taken 59.52 per cent of the second-round vote.
Her rival Grigol Vashadze, from an alliance of 11 opposition parties led by exiled ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM), took 40.48 per cent.
Zurabishvili said her election was a step forward for women and a move closer to Europe for the ex-Soviet republic.
“It is now important to show that this country has chosen Europe,” she told journalists after her win. “For that purpose, Georgians have elected a European woman president.”
“It feels great,” she said, pointing out that she was one of a small number of women presidents in the world.
But opposition leaders — who have accused authorities of vote-buying and ballot stuffing — refused to accept the result.
“We do not recognise the election results, we demand the holding of snap parliamentary polls,” Vashadze said in televised remarks, calling for “a mass peaceful demonstration” in the capital Tbilisi on Sunday.
The election was seen as a test of Georgia’s democratic credentials as it seeks European Union and NATO membership.
It was also a trial run for more important parliamentary elections in 2020 when Georgian Dream is set to face off against a range of opposition parties.
The party is the creation of billionaire tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, who many see as the small country’s de facto ruler.
Flamboyant ex-president Saakashvili, who lives in exile in the Netherlands, claimed “mass electoral fraud” even before official results were released.
“The oligarch has stamped out Georgian democracy and the institutions of elections,” he said on the pro-opposition Rustavi-2 television channel, referring to Ivanishvili.
“I urge Georgians to defend our freedom, democracy and the law. I call on you to start mass peaceful rallies and demand snap parliamentary polls.”
International observers said there were problems with the election but that overall it had been “competitive”. Georgia’s President-elect, Salome Zurabishvili (middle), addressing the media soon after she was announced winner in the hotly contested presidential election in Tbilisi…yesterday