EGN NEWS DESK
Georgia’s ruling party has picked former Manchester City footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili as its presidential candidate, the chairman of Georgian Dream Bidzina Ivanishvili introduced at a briefing Wednesday.
The transfer implies that Kavelashvili, an anti-Western political hard-liner who was prevented from operating as a president of the soccer federation in 2025 as a result of he has no increased schooling, will now probably change into Georgia’s subsequent president.
For the primary time ever, the president will probably be elected not directly by a 300-member electoral school consisting of members of parliament and native authorities representatives, that are dominated by the Russia-friendly Georgian Dream.
“I’m certain that Mikheil Kavelashvili will absolutely restore the briefly stolen dignity to the presidential institute,” stated Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man and a determine who the opposition and critics blame for the nation’s pivot away from the EU and towards Russia.
“There is little question that Mikheil Kavelashvili won’t be within the service of international powers, however within the service of the Georgian state,” added Ivanishvili, taking a jab at present pro-European president, Salome Zourabichvili, who’s in open battle with the ruling party, which is making an attempt to question her over her visits to Brussels.
Having based his personal right-wing Euroskeptic party People’s Power after leaving Georgian Dream in 2022, Kavelashvili is not any beginner to politics. During his soccer profession, he performed for the Georgian nationwide crew, Dinamo Tbilisi and briefly for Manchester City within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
Georgia has been roiled by protests after the contested Oct. 26 parliamentary election wherein the ruling party claimed a landslide victory. Zourabichvili, the opposition events and impartial observers say the election was rigged.
The presidential elections are scheduled to happen on Dec. 14.
Dato Parulava contributed to this report.
