Page 7 - GEORptDec20

and restaurant businesses, the distribution of GEL200 in compensation for the unemployed, as well as GEL300 compensation for traders operating in market segments that will be closed. A four-month utility tax subsidy programme is an important part of this latest assistance package. It will cost the state budget up to GEL270mn.
A curfew is to apply between the hours of 21:00 and 05:00.
Restaurants and other food outlets will fully switch to takeaway services. Fitness clubs and swimming pools will be closed.
All conferences, whether in training, the cultural area or entertainment, must be held online.
Offline sports, arts and cultural activities will not be allowed.
Regular intercity transport will not be available. The restriction will not apply to taxis and passenger cars.
Beauty salons may remain open on the grounds that, if they were to be closed, their personnel would move, uncontrolled, from one home to another, bringing an even higher risk of spreading the virus.
The restrictions will be eased to allow the celebration of New Year’s Eve (December 31) and Christmas (January 6 in Georgia): the night curfew will be lifted for these two days and, between December 24 and January 2, shopping centres will work and public transport (municipal and intercity) will be restored. From January 16 to January 31, except for the weekends, certain restrictions will be eased: municipal and intercity transport will work, trade facilities will open and markets will operate.
Georgia registered 3,157 new cases of the coronavirus infection in the latest 24-hour cycle as of November 16. Of these, 1,249 were reported in Tbilisi. The daily COVID-19 count neared 3,500 on November 13—a figure close to an infection rate of nearly one per thousand people. A code-red warning threshold of three to five infections per thousand people over a rolling 14-day period is set by countries in Europe.
2.2​ ​Final voting leaves Georgian Dream with just over 60% of seats in parliament as opposition boycotts poll
Georgian Dream, the ruling party of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, was on November 21 declared the outright winner of the second round of Georgia’s parliamentary elections after its candidates won all of the 17 seats subject to runoff voting as the opposition went ahead with a boycott of the poll.
Georgian Dream can now go ahead and form a single-party government as it has ended up with 61 MPs elected under the proportional voting system and 30 MPs voted in via the majoritarian system. Eight opposition parties won 59 seats in the first round voting before refusing to participate in the second round voting after claiming the election was subject to vote rigging.
Overall, GD holds 91 seats, just over 60% of all seats in the legislature. In the 2016 general election, it won 115 seats, while in the 2012 contest it secured 83. That was the year GD first came to power, replacing Mikhael Saakashvili's United National Movement (UNM) as the country’s top political party.
7​ GEORGIA Country Report ​December 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com