Page 6 - bne IntelliNews Georgia country report November 2017

2.0 Politics
2.1 Georgian Dream sweeps local elections
Ex-football star Kaladze made Tbilisi mayor
UNM candidates withdraw from runoff races in local elections
Retired footballer Kakha Kaladze will be named mayor of Tbilisi after winning 51.12% of the votes as the ruling Georgian Dream’s candidate in the Georgian capital in the countrywide municipal elections held on October 21, the country's central election commission (CEC) said.
Kaladze, who won honours including two Champions League titles while playing for AC Milan between 2001 and 2010 and captained his country 50 times, entered politics in 2012. Sadly his name is also recalled for the shocking and tragic case of his brother, who was kidnapped in 2001 before being declared officially deceased in 2006, with two men convicted of his murder.), Kaladze served as energy minister between October 2012 and early 2017.
Kaladze ran against 12 other candidates. His closest competitors, independent Alexsandre Elisashvilil and Zaal Umadmashvili, who ran on behalf of the main opposition party United National Movement (UNM), obtained just 17.49% and 16.55% of the cast votes, respectively, according to the CEC.
Promises to expand Tbilisi's economy by boosting tourism, simplify bureaucracy and build a new transportation network were central to Kaladze’s platform.
The race for mayor of Tbilisi was the main battle in the municipal elections, which also represented a test for Georgian Dream ahead of the presidential poll of 2018. Overall, some 1.6mn people making for a 45.64% turnout showed up to vote for the mayors of five independent cities - Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi, Poti and Rustavi – as well as for 58 municipal and district heads and some 2,058 members of 64 local councils.
Two mayoral candidates representing the leading opposition party in Georgia, the United National Movement (UNM), have decided to withdraw from mayor's post run-off races in Kutaisi and Martvili, civil.ge reported on October 24.
Nika Melia, one of the UNM leaders, accused the ruling Georgian Dream party of wanting to organise "violently-held runoffs" and said that UNM refused to participate in the "rules of the game" established by the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili.
UNM performed poorly in the first round of local elections held on October 21, its candidates failing to top any of the races for mayor in the country's largest cities. Georgian Dream won by a landslide.
The election was significant in that it pointed out just how strong Georgian Dream, which also has a parliamentary super-majority, is and how weak and fragmented the opposition is.
Ivanishvili and UNM founder, former president Mikheil Saakashvili, have a long-standing animosity that has resulted in the use of underhand tactics to
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