FINAL REHEARSAL

Salome Zurabishvili won the second round (59.54% of votes, or more than 1.1 million voters) of the presidential elections in Georgia. Supported by the ruling party, the independent candidate became the first woman president in the history of Georgia. Her rival was Grigol Vashadze, who represented the opposition movement Strength in Unity and could collect only 40.46% (around 780 thousand votes) of the votes. Although Georgia is steadily adopting the parliamentary form of government, the presidential election was in the focus of the world media. As a matter of fact, these elections are regarded by many both in Georgia and abroad as a final rehearsal for the 2020 parliamentary elections, which will determine the future of this Caucasian country.

Yet another intriguing moment of the elections was the fact the actual struggle was not between Zurabishvili and Vashadze, rather between the millionaire and former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the founder and main sponsor of the ruling party, and the former President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, supporting the United National Movement (UNM), who had declared his intention to return to Georgia.

Ratings of the Georgian Dream had been recently declining and the party had been losing the support of the public majority. On the contrary, UNM had remained stably popular among the population. According to the results of a public opinion survey held by IRI, if the parliamentary elections were held in May 2018, 27% of the voters would vote for the ruling party, while 17% would vote for the opposition party UNM. For the ruling party, a gap of 10% is a poor incentive. The same polls showed another alarming trend - many Georgian nationals (up to 30%) actually do not support any political force.

It turned out that the polls were close to say the truth: despite a quick victory predicted for Zurabishvili in the first round, the gap between her and Vashadze was a mere one percent (38.6% against 37.7%). The situation for the ruling party was getting worse because the member of European Georgia, David Bakradze, who was the third runner after the first round of elections, asked his supporters to vote for Vashadze in the second round. Certainly, that was quite a sobering, perhaps even a shocking moment for the authorities.

Formally, the ruling party did not nominate its candidate "to ensure the maximum level of pluralism". However, it supported Zurabishvili so explicitly that no one even doubted the candidacy of the presidential candidate. By the second round of elections, the ruling party announced the maximum mobilisation of its resources, and it managed to win. But it was not an easy victory per se.

By the way, some believe that the opposition's efforts to bring the former president back to power were in vain. Saakashvili left Georgia after his second presidential term and was deprived of Georgian citizenship after receiving the Ukrainian one. His political career in Ukraine did not last long and was marked by loud scandals that led to the deprivation of Ukrainian citizenship. The victory of Vashadze could be a revenge on the previous government, and Saakashvili, who is accused of financial crimes and abuse of power in Georgia, might have found ways to clear himself and return to his homeland. Apparently, this possible turn of events has seriously frightened some voters.

It is likely that those who came to power during the rule of Saakashvili will be gradually withdrawn from the power in order to save the ruling party from unpleasant surprises in the parliamentary elections of 2020. At the same time, Saakashvili and his people, of course, will try to raise the public masses again. Thus, supporters of Vashadze pointed to numerous drawbacks during the elections and did not recognise their results, saying that "Georgia has no president." Vashadze appealed to Georgian citizens to go to streets to to demand the appointment of extraordinary parliamentary elections. "...We switch to mass disobedience regime. ...The opposition has united; we are not going to disintegrate; everything is just the beginning," Vashadze said just before this issue was ready for publication.

Apparently, no one is interested in exacerbating the situation in Georgia. Popular unrest is clearly not going to benefit the stability and economy of the country, as well as its political aspirations. The Georgian population is especially concerned with this scenario, as in recent years it has seen many protests and knows that not all revolutionary demands are implemented anyway. That is why Western observers, criticizing certain moments of the elections - especially the government’s decision to write off bank debts to more than 600 thousand citizens of Georgia a few days before the election, generally recognized them.

Currently all attention is focused on the figure of the newly elected president. She will be primarily responsible for the formal representation of Georgia abroad. She has sufficient experience in this area. Being a French national in the past, Zurabishvili had previously worked for many years at the French Foreign Ministry, representing France in Italy, the United States and the UN. As to the European past of Zurabishvili, experts are wondering whether official Tbilisi will now be closer to the EU than to the United States. This is obviously an interesting question, considering the growing disagreements between Americans and Europeans after the election of Donald Trump as the new host of the White House. Incidentally, Zurabishvili has already announced that her first visit as Georgian president will be to Brussels, Berlin, Paris and the Baltic countries. But in fact, it does not matter if Georgia is closer to Washington or Brussels. It is important however that Georgia is not going to change its pro-Western Euro-Atlantic vector. "These six years will be very important for Georgia, which is moving towards integration into Europe, the European Union, and NATO. We are the West, we are Europe, we are pro-European," Zurabishvili said in her interview with the BBC.

In the same interview, the new president of Georgia, who had been once accused almost of pro-Russian position, made it clear that it was not "the right time to cooperate with Russia." That was perhaps Zurabishvili's response to the comment of the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Grigory Karasin, regarding Moscow’s expectations that the results of the presidential elections in Georgia would help normalise relations between the two countries.

However, the development of Georgian-Russian relations needs some time, but history shows that pre-election promises and statements made immediately after the victory often substantially adjusted later according to political and economic realities. Perhaps Salome Zurabishvili has already had this feeling when she had made a few unreasoned statements causing the discontent not only in Georgia, but also in Turkey and Azerbaijan. She made scandalous statement during the pre-election campaign with Armenian voters, where Zurabishvili confronted the Turks (or more precisely, ethnic Georgians from Turkey) and the Armenians, promising Georgian citizenship to the latter. According to many politicians and public figures, the incumbent president in fact has off-handedly touched one of the most painful issues in the region, which cost her the support of Georgian Azerbaijanis.

It is clear that the strategic partnership of Georgia with Azerbaijan and Turkey does not depend on individual electoral statements, given the level of political and economic integration between the countries, joint participation in such large-scale energy and infrastructure projects as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline or the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project. The continuity of good-neighbourly relations with Baku is part of the strategic interests of Tbilisi under any Georgian government, regardless of its foreign policy orientation and pre-election statements of candidates. President Ilham Aliyev congratulated Salome Zurabishvili on her victory, expressing his confidence that "the strategic partnership between Baku and Tbilisi, grounded upon mutual trust and support, will be strengthened in the future."

Zurabishvili should spend six years in her new post. This is the last election by direct public vote. In the future, 300 delegates will appoint the Georgian president. After the inauguration ceremony of the fifth Georgian President on December 16, the new constitution will become effective and the Georgian Dream will lead the country to the parliamentary elections of 2020. Given rather tense and polarized atmosphere in Georgian society, the ruling party is facing a challenging task of regaining the former trust of the fellow citizens. Obviously, the ruling party cannot neglect the forty percent of votes collected by Vashadze, and will have to invent new ways of coexistence with its competitors, which, by the way, is very much in line with the traditions of European democracy. But it is of utmost significance to improve the socio-economic situation in the country, which is practically impossible without the cooperation and support of the nearest neighbours and partners.