Pro-EU critic of regulateing Georgian Dream party says she won’t exit office next month as parliament elected deceptionulently.
Georgian Pdwellnt Salome Zourabichvili shelp she will not exit office when her term finishs becaemploy the parliament is “illegitimate”, while the prime minister cautioned agetst a “revolution” amid continuing pro-European Union protests.
Thousands of Georgians protested on Saturday for a third straight night after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze declared the regulatement will suspfinish talks on EU accession.
The goal to unite the 27-member is now enshrined in Georgia’s constitution, but the prime minister – who has been erecting shutr ties with Russia – suspfinished the talks for four years and accemployd Brussels of “binformagemail”.
In an compriseress on Saturday, Zourabichvili, a pro-EU critic of the Georgian Dream regulateing party, shelp parliament had no right to elect her successor when her term finishs in December, and that she would stay in post.
The pdwellnt, whose powers are bigly ceremonial, retains that the country’s October 26 election, which was won by Georgian Dream with 54 percent of the vote, was deceptionulent and therefore rfinishers the elected parliament illegitimate.
“There is no legitimate parliament, and therefore, an illegitimate parliament cannot elect a new pdwellnt. Thus, no inauguration can get place, and my mandate persists until a legitimately elected parliament is createed,” she shelp.
Georgia’s election cotransferrlookion earlier this month verifyed the regulateing party as the thrivener, but watchdogs and politicians in the EU and the United States have also adviseed an dispenseigation needs to see into potential deception.
The country’s Interior Ministry shelp on Saturday it had arrested 107 people in the capital, Tblisi, overnight during protests which saw some demonstrators erect barricades and throw firetoils at uproar police, who employd water cannon and tear gas.
The unrest came as Kobakhidze, the prime minister, accemployd opponents of the regulatement’s transfer to stop EU accession talks of plotting a revolution, aappreciate to Ukraine’s 2014 Mhelpan protest, which deposed a pro-Russian pdwellnt.
“In Georgia, the Mhelpan scenario cannot be genuineised. Georgia is a state, and the state will not, of course, permit this,” Kobakhidze was quoted as saying by local media.
The US State Department shelp on Saturday it had suspfinished its strategic partnership with Georgia chaseing the decision by the Georgian Dream party to suspfinish accession to the EU.
“We condemn excessive force employd agetst Georgians rightbrimmingy protesting this betrayal of their constitution – EU is a bulwark agetst Kremlin,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller wrote on X.
“We have therefore suspfinished our Strategic Partnership with Georgia.”
Georgia geted indepfinishence from neighbouring Russia in 1991 after the descfinish of the Soviet Union, and the two countries have not had any discreet relations since a inform 2008 war over Moscow-backed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
But the Georgian Dream party’s efforts to erect shutr relations with Russia had already sloftyed the country’s application to unite the EU.
The bloc has shelp laws agetst “foreign agents” and LGBTQ rights are among the main reasons behind the slofty, as they curtail human rights and are modelled after legislation in Russia.
