Georgian Parliament begins sessions; president and opposition, absent and dissatisfied
Juan Pablo Duch
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, November 26, 2024, p. 20
Moscow. In the midst of a heavy police deployment in the center of Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, and with the absence of the president of that South Caucasus country, Salomé Zurabishvili, and the 61 opposition deputies, who do not recognize the results of the legislative elections of last October 26 because they were considered fraudulentthe ruling majority held the first session of the new Parliament this Monday.
According to news agency dispatches, only the 89 members of the Georgian Dream caucus attended, led by tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, number one on their list and founder of this party in power for the last 12 years, while hundreds of people, most of them young, have been protesting since Sunday night – there were those who slept in tents in the middle of the street – at the doors of Parliament, and demanding a repeat of the elections, waving flags of Georgia and the European Union.
Wait for the ruling
The Georgian Constitution says that the attendance of half of the deputies is sufficient for the Legislature to begin its work, but Zurabishvili maintains that first, in strict accordance with the law, the president of the country would have to convene the first session and that she He will not do so until the Constitutional Court rules on his claim, backed by a similar petition filed by 30 opposition figures, to declare Georgian Dream’s electoral victory unconstitutional.
The ruling party alleges that the results, endorsed by the Central Electoral Commission, reflect the majority will of the Georgian electorate, expressed at the polls in a manner free, fair and democratic.
Dissatisfied with the 37 percent awarded by the Central Electoral Commission, the four opposition formations, which managed to exceed the minimum of 5 percent of the votes that allows access to the distribution of seats, assure that they had agreed to form a coalition government and that , adding their votes, managed to exceed the 53 percent that the CCE claims that Georgian Dream achieved.
From the moment it proclaimed its victory, almost a month ago, it became clear that the ruling party had nothing to negotiate with its rivals and that it would ignore the protests. Its 89 legislators, who this Monday re-elected Shalva Papuashvili as president of Parliament, are going to ratify Irakli Kobajidze as prime minister.
Links with the EU and the Trump government
The deputies will dedicate the rest of the week to the formation of the government, which – in the opinion of Georgian observers – will have two or three changes compared to its previous composition.
In this sense, it is assumed that the Foreign Affairs portfolio will remain in the hands of Maka Bochorishvili, a former pro-government deputy who in the previous composition of Parliament served as head of the committee for European integration, whose main task will be to iron out differences with the European Union for the approval of laws that do not correspond to its standards, while strengthening relations with the administration of Donald Trump, who will take office in the United States on January 20.
Another no less relevant issue that the representatives of Georgian Dream will discuss this week is setting the date of the next presidential elections, which will no longer be by universal suffrage, but by the 150 deputies of Parliament and the same number of delegates from the legislative assemblies of the interior. from Georgia.
