NewsletterNewslettersEventsEventsPodcasts
Loader
Find Us
ADVERTISEMENT

Georgia's President Salomé Zourabichvili defiantly joins protesters

FILE -Outgoing Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili speaks at an anti-government rally outside the Parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024.
FILE -Outgoing Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili speaks at an anti-government rally outside the Parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024. Copyright Zurab Tsertsvadze/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved
Copyright Zurab Tsertsvadze/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved
By Daniel Bellamy
Published on
Share this articleComments
Share this articleClose Button
Copy/paste the article video embed link below:Copy to clipboardCopied

The president says she won't step down on Monday, when the newly elected president, Mikheil Kavelashvili, is due to take over.

ADVERTISEMENT

Georgia's current president joined thousands of protests in the streets of the capital Tbilisi on Saturday, exactly a month after opposition protests broke out.

Zourabichvili has said she will defy the results of the legislative elections in October and remain in office after Monday.

And she's been calling for a new vote, claiming that the elections were manipulated by Russian interference.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored the election, also called the election into question.

“Numerous issues noted in our final report negatively impacted the integrity of these elections and eroded public trust in the process,” Eoghan Murphy, who headed its election observation mission, said on 20 December.

In Tbilisi the protesters attempted to form a human chain snaking over all of the capital's eight bridges across the Kura river.

There were also protests in other cities on Saturday against Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.

His ruling Russian-friendly Georgian Dream party was founded by the shadowy billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. On Friday the United States slapped fresh sanctions on him, saying he was undermining democracy to the benefit of Russia.

The protests began on 28 November after Kobakhidze announced that Georgia would postpone its EU bid until 2028. Since then, there has been a steady flow of people rallying during the day and remaining out through the night.

Go to accessibility shortcuts
Share this articleComments

You might also like

Brussels moves to suspend visa-free travel for Georgian diplomats as protests continue

Georgian outgoing president calls for immediate EU support before it's too late

EU affairs ministers rebuke Georgia and Turkey in enlargement conclusions