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Eurasia
December 21, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 21
Georgia’s first woman president Salome Zurabishvili sworn in
bne IntelliNews
Salome Zurabishvili was on December 16 sworn in as Georgia’s first woman president, following her victory in a fierce electoral contest with the united opposition’s candidate Grigol Vashadze.
The inauguration ceremony for the French-born former Georgian foreign minister took place at the Batoni Palace in Telavi. It was attended by some 150 representatives from 55 countries, including former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Several thousand opposition supporters also made for Telavi in a convoy of cars and buses, but police blocked the road, and beat some activists with batons, Reuters reported.
The wide margin by which Zurabishvili won the runoff poll – she took 59.5% of the vote ver-
sus Vashadze’s 40.5% – came after a tight first round. Zubarishvili, who stood as an independent, seemed on the verge of losing the second ballot, but Bidzina Ivanishvili, the country’s richest man, who chairs the Georgian Dream party that heads the ruling government coalition and endorsed the eventual presidential winner, became far more
heavily involved in supporting his favoured candi- date. Controversially, he even made a move that is set to see his foundation forgive the debts of some 600,000 voters.
The US State Department concluded that the November 28 Georgian presidential election run- off went smoothly, but also noted that some irreg- ularities took place. Georgia’s presidential elec- tion runoff was “competitive” and the elections “were well administered”, OSCE said on Novem- ber 29 in a statement on its preliminary findings and conclusions. However, at the same time its election observers pointed to an increased misuse of administrative resources that “further blurred the line between party and state”.
Georgia’s united opposition is to ask a court to declare that the results of last week’s presidential election runoff are null and void, InterPressNews reported, citing opposition leaders who spoke at
a December 2 rally.
Vashadze has demanded that early parliamentary elections are called.