The Georgian electoral college has appointed Mikheil Kavelashvili to succeed Salome Zurabishvili as president of Georgia. Kavelashvili, the only candidate, was put forward by the ruling party Georgian Dream. With the election of Kavelashvili, Georgia is in danger of having two presidents in the country
Zurabishvili has indicated several times that he will not accept the outcome of the electoral college vote and will remain as president. She wants to do this in protest against the results of the disputed parliamentary elections at the end of October, in which Georgian Dream declared itself the winner, resulting in large-scale protests. The political crisis that has gripped Georgia for almost two months threatens to become even worse.
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Zurabishvili does not recognize the legitimacy of the electoral college that voted for a new president on Saturday. This consists of parliamentarians and local representatives and is dominated by GD. Because the Georgian opposition had announced that it would boycott the vote, a second round of elections already seemed legally unnecessary.
Kavelashvili is a former professional footballer who played for Manchester City, among others, but he is now mainly known as a politician who is highly critical of the West. Kavelashvili has also built up a nationalist and right-wing radical profile since 2016. Pro-European demonstrators, who have been taking to the streets against election fraud for weeks, are calling him a pro-Russian government stooge.