Far-Right Ex-Footballer Tapped as Georgia’s Next President

Georgia's ruling party on Wednesday nominated far-right politician, former football international Mikheil Kavelashvili for the largely ceremonial post of president, aiming to strengthen its grip on power.

The Black Sea nation has been rocked by turmoil since disputed parliamentary elections on October 26 that saw the Georgian Dream party secure a new majority.

Alleging the vote was rigged, opposition lawmakers have boycotted the new parliament.

Sitting President Salome Zurabishvili has declared the new legislature "unconstitutional" and is seeking to annul the election results.

Georgian Dream -- which has been accused of democratic backsliding and moving Tbilisi away from Europe and closer to Moscow -- denies allegations of electoral fraud.

Despite the boycott, Georgian Dream MPs voted Tuesday to elect the new president on December 14 -- in a move denounced by constitutional law experts as illegal.

"Our team has unanimously decided to nominate Mikheil Kavelashvili for the post of the country's president," the party's honorary chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili told a news conference.

"By his nature and habitus, he is the embodiment of a Georgian man," he added.

Ivanishvili, Georgia's richest man, does not hold any official government position but is widely believed to pull the strings of power in his country.

Constitutional law experts say that decisions taken by the new parliament are invalid as there has been no ruling yet on Zurabishvili's move to have the results of the October election annulled.

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- Foregone conclusion -

"I will do everything to unite Georgian society around our national interests, our national identity, our values, and the idea of Georgia's independence," Kavelashvili told journalists.

The 53-year-old father of four is a former football star who moved into politics in 2016, becoming an MP on Georgian Dream's party list.

He left Georgian Dream in 2022 and co-founded the far-right People's Power party, widely seen as a satellite of the ruling party.

From 1995 to 2006, he played as a striker in the Premier League with Manchester City and in the Swiss Super League, playing for Grasshoppers, Zürich, Luzern, Sion, Aarau, and Basel.

Under constitutional changes pushed through by Georgian Dream in 2017, the president will for the first time be chosen by an electoral college instead of a popular vote.

The new process makes it a foregone conclusion that a Georgian Dream loyalist will be the next president, with Zurabishvili -- at loggerheads with the ruling party -- set to lose office.

The parliament said the new leader's inauguration for a five-year term would take place on December 29.

The constitutional reform has also further reduced the powers of the next leader.

The president will remain head of state, commander-in-chief, and Georgia's official representative on the world stage, but will no longer be entitled to conduct negotiations with foreign countries or declare martial law without the prime minister's approval.