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October 26, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
Georgia’s ruling coalition
seeks full political power
in presidential elections
former president Michail Saakashvili's absolute power).
Incumbent President Giorgi Margvelashvili is not running, and the candidate backed by Georgian Dream, Salome Zurabishvili, has the lead in
the opinion polls in advance of the election,
with around 31% of the vote, according to a poll conducted by ipn.ge, ambebi.ge and kvirispalitra. ge from October 22-23.
Zurabishvili was born into a family of Georgian emigrants in France and did not visit Georgia until 1986. She was appointed as France’s ambassador in Georgia and then was briefly made Georgia’s foreign affairs minister by Saakashvili after obtaining Georgian citizenship. She was elected in 2016 as an independent MP and her chances
of winning the presidential elections are entirely down to Georgian Dream’s support.
Georgia’s richest man Bidzina Ivanishvili (said
to have a personal wealth of around $4.6bn), who is the president of Georgian Dream, is seeking to secure the presidency’s support, or
at least neutrality, for the two years left of his party’s term in office. Incumbent Margvelashvili, Georgian Dream’s winning candidate in 2013, has demonstrated a degree of independence and Ivanishvili cannot be sure that his new candidate, Zurabishvili, will remain loyal if he triumphs.
Meanwhile, the opposition is deeply divided be- tween remnants of the United National Movement (UNM), which back former speaker of parliament
David Bakhradze, and other small pro-Western conservative parties that support Vashadze.
In the latest poll, frontrunner Zurabishvili was followed by Grigol Vashadze on 27% and Davit Usupashvili of the Development Movement on 11%.
Vashadze is an experienced diplomat and former foreign affairs minister (2008-2012). His greatest asset is the electorate’s frustration with the disappointing performance of the present ruling regime, but his ties with Russia are a threat to his ambitions: he held a Russian passport until four years after the 2008 war with Moscow.
The ballot will take place amid a certain deterioration of democratic practices in the country, marked by non-government organisations pulling out of the election monitoring body and accusing the ruling party of using a range of administrative resources to support its candidate.
Nonetheless, unless there is a major surprise amid extremely low turnout, the overall external orientation of Georgia as a long-time candidate for European Union and Nato memberships will not change. All the mainstream candidates agree in this area.
Although the electorate is rather passive —
with likely a turnout as low as 30%, according
to some polls, and 40%-50% the voters as yet undecided on who to back — the election result is likely to be critical to the magnitude and pace of the institutional transformations planned by the ruling party. Georgian Dream has already dominated the legislative and executive branches for six years, but the party has disappointed the electorate with its lack of vision. It had prompted great expectations six years ago when it replaced Saakashvili’s UNM, founded in late 2001.