Georgia’s pro-EU president faces day of reckoning

At a protest rally in the Georgian capital Tbilisi in early December, the 72-year-old Salome Zourabichvili, the country’s elected president, was seen placing her hand firmly on the riot shield of a black-clad, helmeted police officer.

“Are you serving Russia or Georgia?” she demanded in a scene circulated widely on Georgian social media. “Your duty is to protect the statehood of this country and its citizens. It is not your duty to disperse the people.”

Zourabichvili, elected to the ceremonial presidency in 2018 with the support of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party, has since become one of its strongest critics, championing pro-EU demonstrators and criticising the government’s turn towards Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Amid political unrest in the Caucasian nation, she has consolidated a fractured opposition and is delivering a clear pro-western message to both Georgians and the international community. Now, the ruling party wants her gone.

“Her term is coming to an end, and she lacks the ability to act against the state’s interests,” Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze said earlier in December. “Any attempt to turn her into a radical opposition leader is absolutely destined to fail.”

On December 14, a 300-member college of electors, dominated by ruling party members, voted her out, replacing Zourabichvili with their candidate, Mikheil Kavelashvili — a former Manchester City footballer turned nationalist politician. The inauguration of Kavelashvili, 53, who secured 240 votes, is scheduled for December 29.

The neutering of the last Georgian institution independent of the ruling party marks the final step in what critics describe as “state capture” by the party’s founder, oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who built his fortune in Russia.

In her latest address to the nation on Friday evening, Zourabishvili confirmed her intention to remain in office. She labelled November parliamentary elections in which Georgian Dream claimed victory “a parody”.

“I’m not going anywhere, I won’t leave anyone. I am here because this country, at this moment, needs legitimate institutions,” she said.

Kornely Kakachia, director of the Georgian Institute of Politics in Tbilisi, said the voting out of the incumbent president was likely to spark another wave of the protests that have gripped the country since the November parliamentary elections. Critics and observers allege the results were stolen, a claim echoed by the European parliament, which has refused to recognise the outcome.

A decision last month to postpone EU accession talks sparked renewed mass protests, resulting in violent clashes with law enforcement.

Police have used water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters, with reports of detainees being beaten by police and unidentified masked gangs dressed in black. The opposition dubbed them “titushky” — a Ukrainian term for pro-government thugs who attacked dissenters during the 2014 Maidan revolution.

More than 460 people have been detained during two weeks of protests, according to Amnesty International — an unprecedented figure in modern Georgia.

Repressions include “widespread torture and other ill-treatment of protesters in detention, leaving scores with broken bones, fractures and concussions,” said Amnesty International’s senior director Deprose Muchena, adding that the authorities are also taking the protesters from their homes “one by one”.

The government invited its supporters to assemble on Saturday evening to “light the Christmas tree” set up in front of the parliament building — the site of weeks-long protests. On X, Zourabichvili called this a “big time provocation to create confrontation”.

Zourabichvili knows first-hand what is at stake as Georgia’s opposition activists protest night after night.

Born in Paris in 1952, she comes from a family that fled Georgia after the Soviet Union absorbed the country in 1921, following three years of independence after the Russian Revolution.

After graduating from Sciences Po in France and Columbia University in the US, she built a career in French diplomacy, holding senior roles in Rome, Washington and Brussels. She was appointed French ambassador to Georgia in 2003, during the Rose Revolution that brought an end to Soviet-era leadership in the country.

The following year, Mikheil Saakashvili — then a champion of Georgian reforms and now a jailed opposition figure — granted Zourabichvili Georgian citizenship and, following a deal with French President Jacques Chirac, appointed her as the country’s first female foreign minister.

She soon became prominent in Georgian politics, and along with many of his former allies turned into an opponent of Saakashvili for what she described as his authoritarian tendencies.

Zourabichvili went on to form a liberal political party advocating closer ties with Nato and the EU but it never received more than 3 per cent of the vote. She supported Georgian Dream in the 2013 elections and served as independent MP until she was elected president with its backing in 2018.

“Zourabichvili has tremendous potential as a unifier,” Tina Bokuchava, the head of the United National Movement (UNM), which was founded by Saakashvili and is one of Georgia’s main opposition forces, told the FT.

Despite Zourabichvili’s refusal to pardon Saakashvili — which she could have done as president — and her past affiliation with Georgian Dream, the UNM is ready to support her, Bokuchava said. All key opposition groups have signed an agreement to recognise Zourabichvili as president until new elections.

“Today is the moment of truth for Georgia. We must move on from the past and see who stands where now,” Bokuchava said.

Zourabichvili’s strengths, analysts say, include her connections with France and the West and the legitimacy she gained from having been elected in a recognised vote. She spoke to US president-elect Donald Trump and France’s Emmanuel Macron earlier this month about what she called the recent “stolen election and extremely alarming repression against the people of Georgia”.

“The Georgian people have a friend in Donald Trump. God bless the United States of America,” she wrote on X afterwards.

“It’s hard to predict how the situation will unfold, but Zourabichvili remains the last institution with legitimacy in the eyes of civil society,” said Kakachia. “But much will depend on the West’s response and whether it will continue to recognise her as a legitimate leader,” he added.